Football, Quidditch, Hairspray?
by Moonlight Honeysuckle
Summary: Lily is your average tomboy and loves it that way. However, once she enters her 5th year, her best friends the Marauders mainly Sirius bet she couldn't be a girl even if she tried and so Lily goes to prove herself with some humorous results.
1. Arguements All Around

_Disclaimer: I do not own the fantastic creation called 'Harry Potter' and those who dewel inside the creator's mind_

"1, 2, 3, hut!" Lily felt the force of the oval shaped ball wham into her chest and without wasting anytime, she curled her fingers around the soft ball and began running straight towards the goals. She dodged the boy bulldozing towards her, leaped over the other one who was diving for her legs and dove between the goal posts just as the ref blew the whistle. Two boys ran over to Lily, who was lying face down in the muddy grass and taking one of her arms each, they pulled her to her feet.

"God, that was wicked!" Jason Phelps grinned at her while the rest of the guys ran up to them, whistling and cheering.

"Great match Lily, fantastic goal!" Henry Gamble yelled over the crowd as the guy's all smacked her on the back before heading towards their houses around the park's edge.

"Same time next week?" Adam Singleton asked her, nearly yelling to be heard from his doorstep. After Lily nodded, he gave a short wave before entering his house. Lily picked up the ball that was laying at her feet and walked towards the referee.

"Nice game kiddo, that was some last goal you scored at the end" he said, wrapping one arm around her and leading her in the direction of their house.

"Thanks dad," she said, looking up into the older man's eyes as they walked up the stairs leading up to their house "Mmmm, looks like mum's made dinner and has it waiting already!"Lily hurried inside, running into Petunia on the way to the kitchen.

"Watch it freak!" she snarled, shoving past Lily to get to the stairs. Mr. Evans, who came in just in time to see her run up the stairs said to Lily

"I guess she just called you something nasty again" he guessed as they walked into the kitchen.

"Yeah, and it was a new word to: freak. I'm so glad you bought her that dictionary dad, now I can actually recognize the words that she's saying!"

"Now now Lily, that's not very nice" Mrs. Evans said disapprovingly from where she was bustling around setting the table which Lily noted was Petunia's job.

"Don't worry, I bet she's just jealous" Mr. Evans whispered in her ear as Petunia reentered the room.

"I heard that!" she snapped, seating herself at the table, straightening the knife and fork in front of her.

"How? He whispered it in my ear all the way over here!" Lily shot at her, while Petunia moved on to straightening her placemat and napkin "anyway, if you heard, you would have no problem repeating what dad said" and she folded her arms and waited for Petunia to say something.

"I-, well, he said-, I-, errrr!" she said in frustration, stomping out of the room, up the stairs, and into her bedroom where they heard the door slam.

"Lily, why do you have to be so patronizing? Mrs. Evans exclaimed before putting her apron down on the bench and exiting the kitchen and following Petunia up the stairs.

"She deserved it" Lily mumbled, flicking Petunia's knife to the side so it was no longer straight.

"Lily" her dad said in a disapproving voice, walking over to her and motioned for her to sat down.

"What? You can't tell me she didn't deserve it. I mean-". He motioned for her to hush and she feel silent instantly. In the distance they heard a door shut quietly.

"Okay" said her dad, putting his hand down and breaking into a large grin "now I don't have to pretend to be angry anymore"

Lily smiled. Her dad always came through for her even if her mother always sided with Petunia and rushed after her to see if she was alright. While they waited for Mrs. Evans and Petunia to return, Lily began playing with her knife and fork; she being the fork and the knife being her opponent

"Oh, it looks like he's cornered her but no! She dodges, she jumps, she lunges and she scores! 10 points to Lily Evans!"

"Lily Evans?" her dad inquired, looking up from the newspaper he found on the bench.

"Well, I hadn't come up with a name for a team yet and since I don't have an army of knives and forks, I thought well ..."

"Okay, now I can finally serve dinner!" Mrs. Evans announced, bursting back into the kitchen with Petunia following at her heals. She gave Lily a smug look as she sat down in her seat across from Lily. Lily dropped "herself" and her "opponent" onto the table as Petunia was continuing to sneer at her. She looked down at her own knife and fork and yelled

"Mum! Lily moved my knife!"

Mrs. Evans looked up from where she was serving the pasta and asked Lily "Is this true?" but before Lily could answer, Petunia cut her off

"Of COURSE she moved it! Duh, why would you even have to ask?"

"Petunia dear, aren't you overreacting just a little. You probably accidently knocked it when you ran out of the room," Mr. Evans said wisely, winking at Lily when Petunia turned around and demanded to know what her mother thought.

"Petunia, I have to say I agree with your father. What would Lily have to gain from knocking your knife over? She's already been in trouble today and your father has been watching her all the time while we upstairs-" Mr. Evans pushed his newspaper further under the table so it was hidden from his wife's sharp eyes "Anyway, that's enough Petunia. Now if you want to do something constructive you could come over here and help me serve up the dinner". Petunia groaned.

"But it will ruin my manicure!" she exclaimed, holding up all ten fingers to show her parents. Lily snuffled a snort.

-:-

The next day, Lily was laying on her back on her bed, throwing a tennis ball up and making it rebound on the ceiling and come back down. Petunia said it was a waste of time, but Lily liked it as it gave her a chance to think...and waste time. But when she began to heard stomping she knew the storm was coming.

"Lily, shut up!" Petunia yelled at her, pushing the door open with such force that it rebounded off the wall and came flying back towards her.

"Petunia!' Lily gave a cry of warning to her unbeloved sister but it was too late as the door smacked into Petunia's nose. Lily blocked her ears just as the high, ear piercing scream from her sister echoed from all the walls in the house. Lily heard a thunder of feet as her parents ran up the stairs and into Lily's room where Petunia was standing, fuming, her face two shades of red and Lily standing with her arms folded against her chest, tapping her foot and waiting for the yelling to begin.

"Oh Petunia! What on earth happened to your nose! Here-" Mrs. Evans rushed over, pulling a white handkerchief from her pocket and dabbing Petunia's nose with it. Mr. Evans raised his eye brows at Lily who just rolled her eyes at him. He nodded.

"She bewitched the door! She made it hit me in the nose! Oh, my nose! Its broken!" she shrieked, scanning Lily's room for a mirror, but after three seconds of having no luck, she turned to Lily and commanded

"Where's your mirror?"

"I don't have one" Lily said simply, like it was obvious.

"Oh right, no wonder you look like that!" Petunia said, sticking her nose in the air and running past her father into the hallway to consult the mirror hanging there outside of Lily's room.

"Petunia..." Mr. Evans said, slowly turning around to face his eldest daughter.

"What?" she snapped "I know she bewitched it! Using-, using-, using-"

"Magic?" her mother supplied, a look on anxiety on her face as she longed to get out the first aid kit to fix up her daughter's nose.

"Yes, that!" she exclaimed, pointing to her mother and nodding her head vigorously.

"Petunia, you know very well that Lily isn't allowed to use magic out of school. Besides, did you really see her take her wand out of her pocket and magic it shut?"

"No, but, but- check her pockets! Its probably in there!" she squealed, pointing her finger at Lily's pockets instead. Lily sighed and pulled out the pockets of her cargo pants to reveal two 50p coins as well as a 2 pound coin and a 5 pound note. Three knuts also fell onto the floor to join the rest. A button, which was slightly delayed, fell a second afterward.

"See?" Lily smirked and Petunia let out a shriek of anger. Mrs. Evans looked down at the objects on the floor, and once satisfied that none of them where a wand she turned to Petunia and said

"See sweetie? Lily couldn't have done it because her want isn't on her. By the way Lily," she said, turning towards her youngest, "where is your wand?"

"Oh! Umm" Lily went over to her chest of drawers and pulled out the draw second to the top. She stuck her hand inside the draw full of clothes that were all tossed about and messy and pushed her hand in amongst them. She wriggled it around there for a moment or two, before feeling closer to the back. Finally, her fingers closed around the smooth handle of her rosewood wand.

"FOUND IT!" Lily announced, pulling it out of the draw and sticking it into the air and causing red and green sparks to spit out of the top. She instantly dropped it onto the floor and stepped away slowly before looking up at her parents again. Petunia was holding onto her mother's arm in fear, her bloodied nose forgotten.

"Oh, I put it there after term finished so I wouldn't be tempted to do any magic. You kind of forget you're not allowed to do magic over the holidays if your wands in sight coz you're used to using it the rest of the year," Lily explained before bending down to pick up her wand and throwing it back into her draw and pushing it shut.

"Well, now that you know that I DIDN'T magic it shut and it was because that Petunia pushed my door open with such force that it rebounded and hit her in the nose which is now bleeding, I feel happy that you both realize it was Petunia's own fault and if you wouldn't mind, I would like to get back to what I was doing"

Mr. Evans shrugged, and left the room without complaint. Mrs. Evans, satisfied for the reason given by Lily, turned to Petunia and said

"Come dear, we've got to do something with your nose. I'll get the first aid kit out of the kitchen" and bustled herself out of the room. Petunia followed her to the door, but she remembered something and turned to her younger sister and said

"That reminds me of what I was here about in the first place. SHUT UP!!" and with that she stomped out of the room.

"As if" she muttered under her breath and she walked over and shut her door quietly. She slowly walked over to where the contents of her pockets laid and had just picked up the note when she heard a knock on the door. With the 5 pound note still in hand, she walked back over to the door and opened it and came face to face with Petunia.

Lily sighed and folded her arms with the note still visible.

"Say Lily, could I borrow 5 pounds?" she said in a sickly suck up voice.

"Get lost!"

-:-

SMACK

Lily woke up with a start. Her alarm read 8:46am. Well, Lily overslept a bit, she was usually up at seven but since it was the holidays she didn't mind in the slightest. She turned towards the window to see what made the noise and found a barn owl with a very flat face hovering at the window with a letter tied to its ankles.

Lily walked over to her window seat and opened the latch on the window so the owl could fly inside. She untied the letter from the owl and it promptly took off again. She turned the letter over and instantly recognizing the Hogwarts seal, and tore it open. Then, without glancing at the content, she raced out of the room, down the stairs and burst into the kitchen where her mother had already began to make breakfast.

"Mum, I need to go to Diagon Alley soon, I just got my school supplies in the mail,"

"Nonsense, it's barely 9 o'clock. The post doesn't arrive till at least lunch time" Mrs. Evans told her daughter without looking up from the pancakes she was flipping. Lily waved her letters in front of her mother's face.

"Oh, owl post. We'll discuss it later, now help me eat these pancakes," she said and Lily loaded a plate full of them.

At 10 past 9 they heard a shriek and feet stomping down stairs. As soon as Petunia entered the room Lily said

"Eww, this place smells like tuna!" before looking up and spotting Petunia and said "oh, its only YOU!"

"ERRRR! This bird kept tapping at my window while I was trying to sleep! Because it was annoying me so much, I opened the window to tell it to GO AWAY when it flew in and landed on my head and its still there and its ruining it!!" she yelled at Lily who calmly walked over to it and held out her arm. The bird instantly flew down and landed on it and waited patiently as Lily untied the string. Once Lily had the letter in her hands, it flew back up the stairs and out of, Lily assumed, Petunia's window.

Lily took the letter back to the table and opened it as she sat down. Out folded a letter from one of her best friends, Remus Lupin.

_Hey Lily_

_How's your summer going? Exhausting probably knowing you. I haven't really done much, mainly reading and escaping from Hannah, my little sister. You remember her right? Anyway, James, Sirius and I all got our Hogwarts letters this morning and we're thinking of going to Diagon Alley for the whole day tomorrow. Would be awesome if you could join us._

_Hopefully meet you at the Leaky Cauldron at 8am!_

_Remus_

_P.S. Are you winning the "Battle of the Sisters" again this year?_

"Oh Daddy, this is perfect! Remus just invited me to me him, Sirius and James at Diagon Alley tomorrow. It would be so much more fun shopping" Lily groaned at the word shopping and Petunia shook her head in disgust "if they were there. Daddy could I please go?"

"I don't see why not. I won't be able to take you as work is on the other side of the city but I'm sure you're mother would be happy to drive you" Mr. Evans said thoughtfully before turning back to his paper.

"Hmmm I don't know" Mrs. Evans said after flipping some special 'sugar free' pancakes especially for Petunia "I don't like it how you only hang out with those boys. Why don't you make some girlfriends?"

"Muuuuuuuuum I've told you! I have no interest in dresses and make-up and hairspray. Give me a game of footy or Quidditch any day" Lily returned to stuffing her face with her 'sugar full' pancakes, making Petunia look sick.

"THAT is disgusting"

"Its F O O D Petunia. You put it into your mouth when you're hungry. Don't forget to chew and swallow!" Lily said brightly, finishing her pancakes and returning her plate to the bench "Anyway mum, can you take me tomorrow. Pleeeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeee!"

"We'll see Lily, I've got to take Petunia shopping. She's complaining about the clothes she's got so I have to go and buy her some more"

"What's wrong with the clothes you've got?" Lily turned around and asked her sister though after she said it, she guessed the answer was before she answered.

"Because their out of style! I mean, what would my friends think?"

"Who cares?"

"I do. Unlike you and your ghastly unisex clothes I have pride in my appearance" she said snottily as Mrs. Evans put her special pancakes in front of her.

"They're not unisex! Its just a shirt and jeans" Lily said angrily, hating her sister more then ever.

"And the way you wear you're wearing a red sock and a blue sock together. Urgh, how on earth did I get you as a sister?"

"Oi, don't dis my Monday socks!" Lily retorted, getting angrier and angrier and she could hear plates and cups tinkling in the background. Petunia gasped in fear, and ran straight over to her mother.

"She's using magic!" she squealed and her mother gave Lily a disapproving look.

"Lily, calm down" her father said gently, resting a hand on her arm. Instantly the tinkling stopped. Lily suddenly remembered the point of their argument.

"Anyway Mum," she said, turning towards her "You could always drop me off before you take Petunia shopping. It's not like she's going to be up and ready to go at 7am" sneering at her sister. Petunia returned the sneer.

"You have a point. We'll if you really want to go, I want you ready to leave this house at 7am sharp tomorrow. No later"

"Okay!" said Lily happily and got up from the table and ran up the stairs. As she reached the landing, she heard Petunia shrieked.

"Meh" said Lily to herself "she probably just caught sight of her hair in the mirror"

_A/N: So here we go again, this is my third fanfic! Anyway, i'm off to a good start aren't i? This is the third time i've uploaded this same document with changers! But i got it finally! Yay! Very excited :P Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy it and please don't forget to review to tell me how much you hate my story!_

_Moonlight Honeysuckle xox_


	2. Hi Ho Hi Ho Off To Gringotts We Go!

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor do I own, as I was reminded by my mate James, yes James, big beheamith who wears odd socks, how actually owns the 'Monday Socks' though I swear I have first dibs on Fred the Frog:P Happy readings!**

Chapter 2: Hi Ho Hi Ho Off To Gringotts We Go

Lily heard the flick of the light switch, quickly followed by a shriek.

"Lily, don't do that!" her mother exclaimed as she saw Lily sitting at the bench eating cereal. Lily raised her eyebrows as her mother leaned on the bench for support. Lily took the last mouthful of cereal, hopped off the bench and placed her bowl and spoon in the sink.

"Okay I'm all ready" she announced, leaning against the bench with her arms folded, eyeing her mother up and down and noticing her hair still in rollers, her night gown still on and her fluffy slippers on her feet. Lily knew what was coming next.

"Ready for what, dear?" Lily sighed

"Diagon Alley, you said you were taking me this morning" Lily reminded her, tapping one finger on her arm.

"Oh, I'm sorry dear, it completely slipped my mind! Hang on a minute, I'll grab a coat and meet you in the car" Mrs. Evans said, before turning and walking up the stairs. Lily let out a sigh of relief. She knew her mother would have forgotten but was afraid that she would change her mind. Thankfully, Petunia hadn't rotted the whole of her mother's brain. Yet.

Mrs. Evans met Lily outside next to the car five minutes later, as she had promised her daughter. As they got into the car, Lily saw their neighbor's nosy daughter peering out their kitchen window. Lily waved and plastered a fake smile on her face as she waved to her sister's friend, then, once out of her eyesight, stuck up her middle finger.

"Lily" her mother said and she hurriedly put that finger down so she wouldn't see it when she talked to Lily through the review mirror. As Lily was the youngest child, her sister had first dibs on the front seat, and chose it every single time they rode in the car so Lily just made herself comfortable in the backseat. Anyway, it was there she had her secret stash of wizard's sweets as they tended to freak Petunia out and get them taken of her. This way, it was a place where Petunia would never sit, unlike Lily's room which she suspected her sister raided, however much it disgusted her.

"Is it okay if I just drop you off at The Leaky Cauldron instead of walking in with you as I am still in my pajamas? I also forgot my wallet so I'll give you the key to your vault at the bank and so you can take some money out of that instead of changing the money over" her mother continued, oblivious to the finger Lily had held up.

"Okay, that's fine," Lily replied, putting her legs up to lay across the other two seats in the back.

Forty-two minutes later according to the clock in the car which Lily had been staring at, they pulled up at the Leaky Cauldron. Lily waited patiently for her mother to fiddle around in the car's glove box looking for her key before stuffing it into the depths of her back pack and stepped out of the car.

She walked up to the Leaky Cauldron and pulled the door open, the smell of alcohol hitting her in the face as she entered. However, the bar was empty due to the early hour minus three teenage boys who were sitting at a table near the back door which lead to Diagon Alley. Sirius Black was the first one to spot her.

"Hey hey! It's Evans!" he whooped, standing up and pushing his chair back with such force that it fell over.

"Hey hey yourself!" Lily grinned, punching knuckles with Sirius before he sat down again and landed on the floor.

"I see you got my owl in time" Remus stated, surprisingly not looking up from a book to talk to her "I wasn't sure if you would get it, Hannah's been sending mail to all her friends trying to be cool, but I think she's just freaking her all out" Lily nodded in agreement while the other two boy's just stared blankly at him.

"Why would her friends be freaked out by an owl?" James asked him, with a really puzzled expression on his face, which generally means trouble.

"Because all her friends are muggles, she's only starting Hogwarts this year. Though I think sending her friends mail by owl post is a test to see if anyone else is going to Hogwarts" he finished thoughtfully.

"Okay, shall was begin?" Lily asked them and they nodded with agreement and headed straight into the pub's 'backyard'. Remus, being the tallest, took out his wand and tapped the three bricks on the wall which opened up Diagon Alley. As they were entering their 6th year, they weren't as overly excited about this as they once were but magic always seemed to amaze Lily. She thought it was only because she was a muggle-born and because she hadn't been subjected to it all her life but she soon discovered that Remus was also a muggle-born. He and little sister Hannah were both magic folk but the middle child, Ruben, missed out on that gene.

"I need to go to Gringotts, I kinda spent all my holiday money" Sirius said sheepishly and everyone stared at him. They all knew that at the start of the holidays, Sirius had run away from home, finding refuge at James's house. Mr. Potter recommended that the boys take out some holiday spending money as now they were nearly of age his parents weren't going to buy things for him. And so Mr. Potter took them to Gringotts one afternoon to take out some spending money and they both nearly blew all of it that afternoon when they were let loose in Diagon Alley.

"I got to go too, though I need to go to my vault this time, Mum forgot her wallet" Lily rushed on, saving Sirius from the others.

"Okay, off to Gringotts we go, hi ho hi ho off to Gringotts we go!" James sung at the top of his lungs, grabbing Sirius with one hand and Lily in the other and skipped off towards the bank. Lily just had enough time to grab Remus's shirt and yanked him from a very colorful shop display before they got "lost" in the crowd though with James's loud singing, he could never be lost.

An exhausting two minutes later by Remus's unfit standard, they arrived at the bank. Unlike all the other times Lily had visited the bank, there were only goblins there, sorting though piles of gold and giving them nasty glares as they walked passed, though Lily had never been afraid of them to begin with.

James reached the counter at the end first, as the rest of them had stopped running at the entrance but James had continued right up to the counter.

"Good morning old fellow! We would like to access our gold, if you will!" James smiled, showing off his perfect teeth and had the light of the candle's reflecting of his circular glasses. The goblin gestured to the tunnel off the right and ran off towards it just as the other's finally reached the front desk. By the time they reached the tunnel James was inspecting the carriages.

"Hmmm, you do realize that all your carriages are the same, dull brown colour. This sucks, I wanted to choose a purple one this time,"

"Hell no! Blue all the way!" Sirius shouted at him, sticking his tongue out in triumph.

"No way! Green is awesomer!" Lily yelled at him, having a turn herself of sticking her tongue out.

"You do know Lily, that there is no such word as 'awesomer'?" Remus stated. The room was so silent you could almost hear crickets. He sighed. "Whoop! Go orange!"

The others burst out laughing, with Sirius saying something like 'That's more like it' but it couldn't be heard over the bang of a stick on a cymbal.

"Are you going to access your gold or not? This is not a children's playground!" he slithered, sending goosebumps down Lily's back and they solemnly got into the carriage. Lily just had enough time to tie her hair up and out of her face before the carriage shot out at lighting speed. First stop was James's vault, one of the oldest still standing at vault 328. He took the lantern from the front of the carriage and went into his vault. He returned a few minutes later with nothing more then he came out with.

"Where's your gold?" Remus asked him over the howl of the wind as they shot off again. He answered as they pulled up at vault 930, the vault Remus and now his sister Hannah shared.

"I shrunk the bags, otherwise it would be too heavy" James shrugged, leaning back in his seat.

"That much, huh?" Remus asked but never received a reply as the goblin driving cleared his throat. He hurried out of the carriage, taking the lantern as he left and returned, like James, with what looked like with nothing. As soon as he was in the carriage, it shot off again, this time stopping at vault 280, Lily's own vault. Not needing the nudge she received from James, though getting it, she took the lantern and walked up to the tall, metal door. She felt the wall beside the door, finding the false wall. It slipped up easily to reveal a key slot. She took her key out of her bag; it inserted easily, and she turned it gently to the right, hearing the clicks that told her the door had been unlocked.

She pushed against the door and heard it creak as it slowly opened and revealed her piles, however small, of coins. She took one of her zip lock bags out of her backpack and scooped as many handfuls of gold she could fit into it before locking it shut and placing it to the side and starting on another. Once she was sure she had enough, she shrunk all her zip lock backs, unafraid of underage magic, and levitated them into her backpack before slinging it over her shoulder and returning the key into the inside pocket.

She returned to the carriage, returning the lantern to the goblin and taking her place between James and Sirius. The carriage shot off as soon as she sat down, stopping shortly after at vault 249, which took everyone's, except Sirius's, breath away. It was like one of those old Greek temples, with those tall, now grey pillars out the front with a grand entrance beneath it. Sirius jumped out and made his way over to the door, but instead of slipping his key into the key hole in the middle of the door, he walked over to the side of the door where Lily noticed a small door next to it which she hadn't noticed before. Sirius inserted the key into the wall and turned it, the small door opening wide enough for him to slip through. He came back a few minutes later, returning the lantern to the goblin and sitting back down next to Lily.

"I'm surprised she hasn't changed the locks yet" he muttered, Lily understanding who he was referring to. Nobody spoke again until the returned back into the artificial sunlight of the bank's entrance which now was filled with the buzz of busy shoppers waiting to access their gold. Once they reached the outside of the bank, they decided to buy school supplies first, before indulgences.

"Hey Lily, when's your birthday?" James asked on the way to Twilfitt and Tatting's. They had agree to buy all the robes while the other's bought the school books. Since Sirius and James were the same size and Remus a size higher, it was quite easy. Nobody knew Lily's size.

"June, why?" she asked him, puzzled as they continued down the street.

"Shit, I forgot to buy you a present!" James exclaimed, making Lily remembered that it was true, he was the only one of her friends that happened but she just thought of it as one of the many famous lapses of James's Potter's memory, though usually they started with him forgetting girls and ending with a slap.

"Yeah I guess you did, so?" Lily asked, not caring. She kind of felt like she had out grown presents on birthday's a while ago though she never told her friends, knowing the up roar that would endure.

"Remind me to get you something today" James made her promise as the reached the store, refusing to enter until she did. Seeing as it was the easiest and fastest solution, she agreed. Twenty minutes later, they had bought everyone's school robes but hadn't risked buying the dress robes on the list, and Lily saying that she wanted to put of that torture off as long as possible.

They met the others back at the Leaky Cauldron for a spot of lunch, or in Sirius's case, a three course meal. With their stomach's full and Sirius's eyes bigger then his belly, they headed back out into Diagon Alley to have fun. They all made a bee-line for Zonko's where they stocked up on itching powder and painful instruments. They then crossed the road alley to the Quidditch shop where they marveled at the Comet 260 and the Phoenix and Lily wishing she had something faster then her Lightningbolt, though considering she bought her broom last summer it wasn't really that old.

After leaving both those shops, their money bags were considerably lighter from when they entered, which sure was saying something due to the fact their money backs were shrunken. After finishing their sundae's under the brightly coloured umbrella's outside Florean Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour, James's turned to Lily and said

"Remind me"

"Umm, okay. You had to buy me a birthday present?"

"That's the one!" James said, leaping of the chair, grabbing Lily's arm and pulling her into the store across the road. Once inside, Lily looked around at her surrounding and surprised to find herself in what muggle's would call a pet store.

"Choose anything, anything you like and it's yours!" James grinned, knowing full well that Lily had always wanted a pet, yet never received one.

"Oh James, are you sure?" Lily asked, suddenly nervous. Pets were quite expensive.

"Duh! Don't tell me you're getting soft on me" he smirked and Lily shouldered him.

"As if"

"Okay, we'll have fun. Hmmm I'll think I'll go and have another sundae," he said thoughtfully, leaving Lily in the care of the shop keeper.

"Looking for anything in particular dear?" the young women asked. Lily shook her head

"No thanks, I'll just have a look around" The lady nodded, and headed out to the back of the shop. Lily walked along aisle of owls, and cats but they were so common that she didn't really want one. Anyway, she could use school owls to write letters and cats were just so pesky. Lily soon found herself in an aisle surrounding her of toads. She bent down and peered at one which was second from the bottom. It's beady eyes stared at Lily through the bars. It suddenly shot its tongue out towards Lily and she quickly pulled her head back.

She continued down the aisle of toads, then headed down the one with rats and mice. She was neither a fan of rats or mice, however cute they were and so she walked with a quick pace for the remainder of the aisle.

The last aisle however, was quite miscellaneous and Lily thought that she couldn't find something here; she wouldn't find anything at all. She peered through the cages, coming face to face with rattle snakes and rabbits. In the middle of the row, she peered through the cage but couldn't see anything. She looked at the tag at the bottom of the cage which read

Australian Green Tree Frog

Usually found in the rainforests of Northern Australia

Powers Unknown

Lily felt around for the handle on top of the cage and pulled it out from the shelf to get a better look. She held the cage up to the light and looked at the frog within. It laying in the corner, its smooth, green back was shinny and its eyes were closed as if it were sleeping. Lily opened the lid of the cage and carefully slipped her hand under the cool body of the frog and picked it up. She lifted the frog to her eye level and looked into its eye lids.

Suddenly, his eyelids flew open, revealing his black eyes but Lily didn't flinch in surprise. She had seen the glint in the corner of his eyes and knew he was the one for her. With the cage in one hand and the frog still in the other, she returned back to the counter, the witch apparating as soon as she placed the empty cage on the bench.

"Ahh the Green Tree Frog. Good choice, if I do say so myself," she said, the cage disappearing as she spoke. "And how will you be paying today?"

"Please debt the vault 328" Lily said, remembering the vault they visited early that day when James didn't show up to pay. The witch nodded, and then gave her instructions on how to look after the tree frog. After sending the food and accessories back home, Lily carefully placed the frog in the pocket of her jacket and left the shop and headed back to the ice-cream parlor, where she assumed Sirius was already on his third sundae, James just finishing his second and Remus with his nose in a book. They all looked up at her as she approached them at the table.

"Oi, where's your pet?" James demanded as she sat down at the table. Lily put her hand into her pocket and gently closed it around the frog, pulled it out and placed it on the table.

"Awesome!" Sirius exclaimed "But, uh, what is it?"

"Its an Australian Green Tree Frog" Remus answered when he looked up from the book and spotted it on the table.

"And our walking, talking encyclopedia comes to the rescue yet again!" James joked and Remus shrugged.

"What are you going to call it?" he asked, ignoring James's and Sirius's encyclopedia jokes. He bet they couldn't even spell the word.

"Fred" Lily said, as the frog woke up and looked at her with glistening eyes.

"Fred it is then. Fred the Green Tree Frog" James exclaimed hailing a waiter "Chocolate chip sundae's all around!" but the look on Sirius's face turned them all of the food. Lily thought it must have been the green colour of his face.

**A/N: Okay, chapter 2 done already! So SO sorry to my Parisian Romance fans, I know its just the one chapter left to go but I'm having some issues. As Grey Mustang would say, I have trouble with mountains and she'd be right. Aka I know what I'm doing, I know how it finishes, I just gotta write it! But you'll just have to wait a little longer I'm afraid! Anyway, thanks to mylife'ssobuen, marie, BrazilianPrincess, tm7, Mad Over Mooney, Grey Mustang, CASOCCERCHIC02, keyga1, and golly g willikers for reviewing!! Also thanks to yourheartsdesire for your review, and in answer to your question it depends what happens in deathly hallows! If you enjoyed this fanfic, please review! Critisim appriciated and it takes 3 seconds!**

**Moonlight Honeysuckle**


	3. I Bet You

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter but I DID finish HP7 in seven straight hours!! Feel so proud :P_

Chapter 3: I Bet You

A week later, Lily found herself wheeling a trolley with the front left wheel going the opposite direction to the rest along the platform between platforms 9 and 10 with her father following closely behind. As Lily got closer and closer towards the barrier, she heard the raised voices of her friends over the rest of the crowd. She softly chuckled to herself as they came around the last wall and came face to face with James, Sirius and Remus.

"Hey Mr. E!" Sirius said as he came bounding up to Lily and her father , grabbing her father's hand with both of his and shaking it quite violently, though Mr. Evans was quite accustom to Sirius's antics.

"That's quite a firm hand you've got there Mr. Black, take care with it and- " he leaned closer to 'whisper' something in his ear ' and if any boys try and make a move on her, make sure that firm fist connects with their face"

"Oh don't worry Mr. E. No guy is going to make a move on Lily anytime soon" he said sniggering, sobering up at the look on Lily's face and quickly added "with a father like you looking out for her like you do" and with that, he said a quick goodbye and hurried off, running into the barrier and disappearing before Lily had a chance to yell at him.

"Ahh, well, another year awaits with studying and exams and pranks" he said with a wink.

"Don't let mum hear you say that" Lily joked, leaning forward and hugging her father. He returned the hug, patting her softly on the back.

"Well, don't forget to write. I'll miss you Lil" he said, drawing away.

"Miss you too dad. Now excuse me while I murder one of my mates" Lily said angrily, charging through the barrier and nearly knocking the person down who was standing on the other side. After dumping her trunk in the luggage compartment and feeling in her pocket for the reassuring feel of Fred before climbing aboard the train. The whistle sounding as she was making her way down the hallway, the train lurching to a start and making her reel backwards in surprise.

She found them sitting in a compartment near the end of the carriage, where they usually liked to sit as not to be disturbed. She yanked the doors open, stormed inside and slammed the sliding doors shut with such force that one of the pains of glass had spider webs imprinted in it. She feel into the seat next to Remus and sat there, arms folding, her icy eyes fixed on Sirius.

"Whoa, did the ice princess just storm into our compartment by mistake?" James joked after looking at Lily's face. She turned her fix gaze on him and he was quiet instantly.

"Uh Lily, are you going to explain to the rest of us what happened?" Remus asked gently, not wanting the icy gaze of a witch upon him; unexplained things happen usually happen around now.

"That thing over there was born" she snarled in Sirius's direction. The other two turned to stare at Sirius too, with the expression 'god mate, what have you done now' on the faces.

"Well, in my line of defense I have to say what I said is true" Sirius said promptly. James and Remus flinched as they saw Lily's emerald eyes flicker.

"Sirius, what EXACTLY did you say?" Remus asked cautiously, being aware that Lily's eyes could lock on him at anytime.

"Well, Lil's dad just asked me to punch any guy that made a move on her and I said no prob coz no guy's going to make a move on Lily" he said, the others flinching again, Lily's eyes narrowed and Sirius cast a shield charm just in time. Scared Lily might turn on them at any moment, they cast Bubble Body charms so they could say their piece. Sirius cast one soon after.

"Well, Lil..." James said, throwing caution into the wind "what he said IS kind of true. I mean, you're a real tomboy, and an awesome one at that, but you're a little clueless on the girly side of life"

"Yeah Lil, like you don't wear dresses or skirts, just shapeless shirts and cargos. And you never wear make-up or do anything that regular girls do like gossip in stuff"

"Dresses are itchy" Lily said bluntly, her arms still folded but her eyes had dimmed for a minute, letting them have a say.

"Yes but they allow a nice breeze around your privates" Sirius replied, making the other three giving him queer looks. He just shrugged "I have girl cousins who like playing dress ups, besides it gives me an excuse"

James and Remus shook heads in sickness of their friends...habits.

"Anyway Lily, truthfully, I don't think you could be a girl even if you tried to so why do you care?" Sirius said, speaking his mind from behind the charm.

"I could to! If I really wanted to I bet I could. But I don't so I don't care!" she retorted, a light breeze suddenly occurring in the compartment.

"Whatever, I'm just saying that I doubt you could, even if you wanted to. I'm not the only one," Lily glanced as James and Remus. They nodded sheepishly.

"Fine! I bet I could!" Lily jumped to her feet, the breeze becoming more forceful and making James and Remus uncomfortable after Sirius's confession.

"It's a deal. By the time we come back home on the Hogwarts Express at the end of year, you'll be a girl" Sirius announced, happy with himself.

"Dude, she's ALWAYS been a girl, just not acted like one" James reminded Sirius, who looked at Remus who also nodded. He grinned sheepishly. Lily stormed out.

-:-

Lily stomped down the hallway, into the next carriage before she let out a shriek of rage. She just KNEW that this was going to happen at some point, though she was suspecting it more to come from James, not Sirius. Sirius seemed like the one who always got her, even when he was trying to make a move on her but he soon gave up after their first year when he realized she was just like him or James or Remus and that was just the way she liked it.

And now? Well she had no choice but to go about it and make friends with the people she had been avoiding for the 6th years she'd been attending Hogwarts: girls. Well, if she was going to make friends with the enemy, it would have to be of her choosing and on her terms. She sat down right there and then in the hallway, thinking about the selection of girls she had to choose from.

There was Claudia Roderick, the face of the female half of the Gryffindor population. Apart from making all the boys jaws drop; her 'friends' included. Sirius and James tried continuously to win her heart, though Lily remembered vaguely a time in their third year when Remus was the one who won her heart, or so she claimed. They broke up two and a half weeks later.

Then there was Felicity Hofflin, the Karen Smith of Hogwarts who was conveniently Claudia's best friend. There were rumors going round that her father, a high up ministry official, actually had to bribe the school council to make sure she made it into Gryffindor where her ancestors had reined rather then Hufflepuff where her rightful place lied.

Patience Oxley came next, the wannabe, the one who wanted to be Felicity Wallace so it could be her that basked in Claudia's light. Perhaps she wasn't as pretty as Felicity, but she sure had the brains to back it up, she was Sirius, James and Remus's main competition when it came to grades. That was probably the reason Claudia wasn't interested in her, too much 'nerd' for her liking perhaps.

Then lastly there was Jessica Hamon who was neither popular, nor wannabe popular nerd. No, she was more of the shy, lonely type. She was most commonly found curled up by the fire with a book. She was the one out of all her room-mates she knew the least about, Lily realized, though she probably wouldn't be the one Lily would had to make friends with.

No, Lily reasoned, the best way to become a 'girl' would be to become friends with the 'perfect' girl, and she could do this through Felicity. If she became friends with Felicity, she could become friends with Claudia and viola, Lily would become the girl her friends wanted her to be. And the sooner that happened, the sooner she could return to be football lover, Quidditch fan that she was.

Lily stood up from the floor, deciding it would be best to find Felicity now; she had more a chance of being alone on the train then at Hogwarts. She made her way back along the corridor, looking into each compartment as she passed, searching for the brunette.

At last, she spied her in a compartment near the back, reading a magazine; Lily couldn't make out which one though the class. Lily took a deep breath, and then, once saying a goodbye to her life as it was, stepped boldly into the compartment. Seeing the title of the magazine she exclaimed

"Oh my god! Do not tell me that is the September issue of Which Witch?" Lily fell down in the seat next to her as Felicity looked up from her book.

"Do I know you? And- " she gasped in horror "what are you WEARING?"

"Oh, you would not believe it! We just moved house yesterday and I didn't get time to unpack any or my clothes so she made me wear my sisters – her- her unisex clothes!" Lily complained, slumping back into her seat, a look of despair on her face.

"Oh, you poor thing! I would simply DIE if I had to wear-" she eyed Lily's clothes up and down "THAT. I'm Felicity by the way, Felicity Hofflin. Gryffindor 6th year," she said, smiling though thoroughly disgusted at Lily's wardrobe.

"Lily Evans, also a Gryffindor 6th year. I think you're in my dorm" Lily said, praying for a good reaction.

"Excellent! That means I can lend you some of my clothes until you get yours unpacked!" she said happily, though Lily had a feeling she only made the offer so she wouldn't have to look at the baggy top and faded jeans.

"That would be just awesome!" Lily said in a sickly 'popular person's' voice.

"Actually," Felicity said slowly "This is the October issue of Which Witch. My daddy got it straight from the printers just before we came here. Nobody's read it yet, so it's a real honor and I was wondering...do you want to read it with me? It would be more fun discussing it with another person interested in fashion then by myself"

"Are you kidding? I would love to!"

Ten minutes later Lily was regretting every word.

"Ew, they're saying that coral pink is back" Felicity grimaced. Lily, who hated all shades of pink because 1 it was a girly colour and 2. It clashed horribly with her hair, couldn't care less about a particular shade but

"Oh, I no! It was horrible the first time and so it must be a joke that they're bringing it back a second time" Lily returned the grimace, though mainly for other reasons.

"Totally" Felicity agreed, turning the page "oh goody, a quiz. Can I do you first?"

"Of course!" Lily replied though thinking what where magazines thinking about putting quizzes in magazines. Surely they got enough education at school, besides, what quiz would they put in a gossip magazine?

"Here we go: What colour nail varnish suits your personality!" Felicity read aloud. Lily forced herself to sit up straight in her seat.

"Okay question 1. What colour rose would you choose to receive?

a)Red

b)Yellow

c)White

d)Black

"Hmm probably white" said Lily, hoping she said something right. Felicity didn't look up so she crossed her fingers for extra luck.

"Question 2. What is your favourite season?

a)Summer

b)Autumn

c)Spring

d)Winter

"Um probably d, winter" Lily said. Felicity didn't look up so Lily again, assumed for the best. This continued throughout the remainder of the 23 questions. Then finally

"Okay, you are d) white. You are a pure person with a kind heart and you show it on your nails," Felicity read. "Excellent, I've got white nail polish, I'll do your nails tonight!"

"Yay! Great!" Lily said with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Felicity didn't pick up on it, she had turned back to the magazine.

"Do you want me to quiz you now?" Lily asked, wanting something easy to do.

"Oh, no I already no what colour I am. I asked Claudia, she's fantastic with colours. You should ask her sometime" Felicity responded, sinking down in her seat, engrossed with the magazine. Lily sank further in her seat, trying to undo and retie her laces using her mind.

Her concentration was broken when she heard the compartment doors slide open.

"Oh sorry, I didn't think I saw anyone in here. I think I will just, just go now"

"Good idea" Felicity snapped, looking up for a short about of time to take in the girls outfit before turning back to the magazine. Lily shot her an apologetic smile before she shut the doors.

"See, its girls like Jessica Hamon that give Gryffindor a bad name. Her clothes are worse then the ones you're wearing now, and that's bad"

"Totally" Lily agreed. Lily thought about it after a while and asked

"What about Patience Oxley?"

"Oh her," Felicity said, putting down her magazine to explain "The thing is, even though she's just trying to be me, she's pulling it. Her fashion sense is totally perfect, or is it because she's copying me?"

Lily mentally whacked her head, maybe a little too hard.

"Ow!" she murmured, Felicity didn't notice.

-:-

For the rest of the train ride to Hogwarts, Lily stuck to Felicity like glue. Or was it the other way round? Lily sat next to Felicity at the Feast, she could feel Sirius's eyes burning into her head but she turned her back on him to discuss hair curling techniques.

Lily couldn't wait to get back to her dormitory, and couldn't wait even more for some time by herself. After giggling all the way from the Entrance Hall to Gryffindor Tower, she promptly collapsed on her bed when Felicity left to go to the bathroom, relieved she didn't ask her to accompany her.

Jessica was already there, sitting on her bed reading. She looked up when Lily let out a long groan.

"You okay, Lily?"

"Yeah, just having a dilemma," Lily responded to her pillow.

"I'll say Felicity's a dilemma, though I don't see why you would be hanging out with her. I thought you hung out with those boys, Potter, Black and Lupin?"

"I don't want to talk about it" Lily said, again responding to her pillow.

"If you insist," Jessica said, getting off the bed and walked towards the door. She paused by Lily's bed on the way out.

"Well, if you ever want to talk to someone who isn't a guy or a girl with no brain, I'm here" she said. When Lily didn't respond, she walked out of the room. Lily rolled over. She thought about what on earth she had gotten herself into. She stood up and walked over to her trunk which lay at the end of her bed. She opened it, and found all her muggle clothing which was lying at the top and put them in a bundle on her bed. She then took out her wand, pointing it at the clothes and banished them into oblivion.

So that was all her clothes, she'd have to make up a story later when her clothes didn't arrive from home, probably have to buy herself a new wardrobe when she went to Hogsmeade. Oh, Petunia would be proud.

She had picked up her pajamas, sweat pants and a baggy tee-shirt, just as Felicity returned. She opened her mouth to say something, but then her eyes spotted Lily's pajama's and shrieked.

"Oh my God, you're not actually going to wear that! It looks like its covered in fungi!"

"I no! But I don't have any others!" Lily complained, feeling insulted on the inside about Felicity calling her pajama's covered with fungi! Hadn't she heard of army print?

"Please borrow a pair of mine! I wouldn't forgive myself I left you to sleep in fungi, here" she tossed Lily a pair of white and pink stripped pajamas. Lily caught them, and looked at the shade of pink that the strips on the pajamas were. They looked familiar.

"Uh Felicity, you don't expect me to actually WEAR these pajamas. I mean, the strips are coral pink!"

Felicity rushed over and snatched the pajama's from Lily's hands and examined them.

"You're right! Here" she tapped the strips with her wand and it turned magenta. She then returned to her bed and began to change into her own pink pajamas. Lily looked down at the pajamas, which were still pink. When Felicity's back was turned, she tapped her wand on the pajamas to change to the colour of the pink strips to white, so they looked plain white. She figured that wouldn't raise many questions as purple or green would.

Lily turned and saw Jessica standing at the doorway. She wasn't sure how long she had been standing there but once Jessica caught her eye she snorted. Lily shrugged, if she was the real her, she would have snorted to. Lily was about to say something to Jessica when she heard Felicity order 'Nox' and the room was dissolved into darkness.

Lily heard Jessica make her way across the dorm as she pulled back her blankets and fell into her bed. She had been sharing a dorm with the same girls for the past five years yet, she knew virtually nothing about them. Not that there was much to no about Felicity but still.

Five minutes passed in totally silence and darkness. Jessica got changed in the darkness and fell into bed a minute later. All was quiet until at 12:15am, when Patience Oxley burst through the dormitory door, giggling hysterically. Lily opened her eyes, even though the light from the staircase was quite bright. Patience giggled her way to her bed which was next to Felicity's and feel straight into it, giggling uncontrollable.

"Gezzus Patience, shuddup! People are trying to sleep!" Jessica yelled groggily from the bed next to Lily's.

"Humph!" was Patience's response to Jessica's outburst. Felicity sat up in her bed, her hair still perfect from her hundred brushstrokes she did in the bathroom before bed.

"What happened?" she asked in a totally gossip voice. Patience leapt from her bed and landed at the end of Felicity's.

"Oh Sirius! He's such a tease!"

Lily snorted. She knew they only flirted with her because it was fun to torment her. Felicity and Patience obviously heard her as they both turned to stare at her.

"Oh, its just that its so, uh cute?" Lily said, trying to be a 'girl'

"Totally! I agree with Lily, I think you and Sirius would be so cute!" Felicity exclaimed, grabbing Patience's hands and they bounced up and down on the bed.

"Wait" said Jessica slowly and sitting up even slower "I'm confused. I thought YOU were going out with Sirius" she said pointing to Felicity. Felicity flicked her hair back and said

"As if! We went out like forever ago! My eyes are now on the tall blonde" she giggled.

"Ooo Remus Lupin?" Lily exclaimed, trying to include herself. Felicity blushed.

"Oh my God, you totally like him!" Patience exclaimed, clapping her hands happily for her discovery.

"Shut up, you'll jinx me!" Felicity squealed, pushing Patience off her bed. She landed on the floor, and scrambled to climb into her own bed.

"But," Felicity said, lowering her voice "If you can keep a secret, I'd tell you that I'm making my first move on him tomorrow at breakfast!" Felicity and Patience bounced up and down on their beds with excitement, Jessica groaned, falling back down on her bed with a thump, grabbing her blankets over her head and Lily made a mental note to safe Remus tomorrow at breakfast.

_A/N: Here we go, chapter 3 finished and I bet my APR fans are ready to slit my throat! So sorry guys, still having mountain problems! Thanks to Grey Mustang, Pyromaniac-Girl, emeraldeyes, BrazilianPrincess, Maxie1514, Keyga1 and Mad Over Mooney for reviewing! Please review!_


	4. Out With The Old, In With The New

_A/N: Hi, I finished the last chapter of APR and posted it, yay me! However, I might write an epilogue though I'm not totally sure yet. Um, the reason for this A/N at the start of the chapter is because after rereading my last chapter, I noticed an error though I don't know if people picked up on it or not. Felicity's last name is Wallace, not Hofflin. I think I was in a split mind at the time but a friend pointed out there was a celebrity called Felicity Hoffman or something so its definitely Wallace. Enjoy Chapter 4!_

Chapter 4: Out With The Old, In With The New

The next morning, Lily awoke to the sound of 'Portions of Potions' by some wizarding band that Sirius was a fan of. She groaned at the sound of the opening bars, annoyed that Sirius's taste in music had rubbed of on Felicity. She turned over, and began to hide her head under pillow but thought better of it as she was trying to get into their good books.

"Come on Lily! Time to get up!" Felicity sung, pulling the covers off Lily. She sat up and stretched, scanning the room as she did so. Jessica had her head under her pillow, doing what Lily had done seconds previous, Felicity and Patience had their hairbrushes out and were using them as microphones. Lily glanced at the bed between Felicity and Patience and noticed it was empty and the sheets prissily made.

"Where's Claudia?" Lily hadn't really taken any notice of when Claudia arrived and left from Hogwarts, but she realized that she hadn't actually seen Claudia on the night before term except in their first year when they were being sorted.

"She never arrives till the first day back," Felicity explained before whispering "She's afraid of trains"

"Oh" said Lily, using her fingers to pretend to zip her mouth shut before going over to her trunk to get her robes out.

"Come ON!" Patience snapped, her foot tapping "We're going to be late for breakfast" However, Lily was sure the real reason was that Patience was mad at her for taking Felicity's attention away from herself. Lily quickly dressed and was ready in a matter of minutes, but to Patience it mustn't have been enough as she kept going to Felicity

"Come on! Lets just leave her and she can meet us there. I don't even know WHY we are waiting for her,"

"Shut up Patience. If you have a problem being patient and waiting, then YOU go down to breakfast!" Felicity sneered and Patience shut up straight away. The three of them descended down the girl's staircase and walked into the common room. Lily spied James, Sirius and Remus in the corner and quickly turned her head the other way. She remembered how she was going to save Remus from Felicity but decided that he deserved it.

They walked out of the portrait hole, their arms linked with Felicity in the middle, Patience on the right and Lily on the left. Lily liked this solution because she didn't have to stand next to Patience, however, Patience was having her own ideas and kept trying to push between Lily and Felicity to stand in the middle but was failing miserably.

"Hey, Lily!" A voice yelled from behind them, making the trio stop in mid step. James Potter came running up to them and shook his head of hair as he stopped before speaking to Lily.

"So Lily, how you doing?"

Lily make herself blush before turning back to Felicity and Patience before letting out a giggle and a millisecond later the other two joined in before turning their back on him and continued to walk down the corridor, leaving James behind with him scratching his head in confusion at what Lily was giggling at him for.

-:-

As they sat down at the Gryffindor table a few minutes later, Lily realized she didn't know have to eat like a girl. She hadn't really thought about it before but remembered a time where Sirius was teasing Felicity for only eating a quarter of a slice of toast so Lily decided to watch first.

Since Patience was sitting opposite her, she decided it would be less suspicious to stare at her then stare at Felicity who was sitting next to her (Patience wasn't happy about that but after the outburst this morning she decided to keep her mouth shut).

Patience it seemed, was watching Felicity to see what she was going to eat first. Lily was sure it was so that Patience wanted to learn her eating habits since she wanted to be Felicity so much. Felicity took a green apple from the fruit bowl and took a bite out of it. Patience hand shot in the bowl afterwards, though unfortunately came out with a red one. She bit into it grumpily. And Lily? Well, being the individual she was, promptly stuck her hand in and came out with a pear.

It was when Lily took her third bite out of her pear when she heard a scream. Felicity had leapt out of her seat and ran off down the Great Hall towards the entrance. Lily turned her head in time to see Felicity run up to a girl with chocolate brown hair a bear hug. Lily turned back to see what Patience was doing and saw her still in her seat, giving Felicity an dirty look. She turned back to look at Felicity and saw her and Claudia hand in hand coming down towards them. As they came closer, Lily smiled.

"Claudia, I want you to meet Lily. Lily this is Claudia," Felicity introduced, smiling at both of them.

"Its really nice to meet you" Lily replied, standing up, trying to think of something else to say.

"Hi! It's so nice to meet someone who doesn't stammer around me. And you're in Gryffindor too? Fantastic!" Claudia smiled, sitting down between Lily and Felicity.

"So how come you've become friends with Felicity? I thought you were friends with Potter and co.?"

"Well, they just don't understand a girl's need to gossip of fashion sense" Lily sighed. Felicity and Claudia nodded enthusiastically.

"I know!" Felicity complained "When I was dating Remus, he actually feel asleep when I was telling him about Benson cheating on Spencer with Stevenson!"

'Of course he would've' Lily thought but said 'How rude!'

"Miss Evans, your timetable" Professor McGonagall interrupted handing a timetable to her, Claudia, Felicity and Patience "And I'm glad that this year you arrived on time this year Miss Roderick" McGonagall added and Claudia smiled.

"We started earlier to avoid traffic" Claudia replied before McGonagall continued down the Gryffindor table. Lily looked down at the timetable she had been given and scanned her subjects for today.

"Looks like we have charms first up" Lily stated, looking up at the others.

"Aww I love having charms! Professor Flitwick is so cute!" Claudia simpered and Lily and Felicity nodded in agreement.

"Oh my God I know!" Patience exclaimed afterwards, making Claudia and Felicity stare at her.

"No Patience, no. Moments gone" Felicity snapped and Claudia nodded. Patience slammed her half eaten apple on the table.

"Fine! I know when I'm not wanted" she snapped before getting up and storming out of the hall.

"Finally!" Claudia exclaimed "Why do you even hang out with her?"

"Coz she was like the only other person like us. Well, until now. Lily is SO much cooler then Patience!" Felicity explained and Claudia turned to Lily and smiled.

"I'm really glad you're going to start hanging out with us Lily" Claudia said and she and Felicity stood up and walked arm and arm out of the Hall.

Once they were out of sight, Lily grabbed two pieces of toast and spread peanut butter thickly across them.

"Hey Lily" Sirius said brightly as he slid down the bench next to her.

"What do you want?" Lily snapped as James and Remus joined them.

"Nothing, just seeing how you're going as a girl" Sirius replied, taking a piece of Lily's toast.

"I'm doing fine" she snarled through her teeth after she failed to stop Sirius from taking the toast.

"Hey! No need to snap, just wondering" Sirius said whilst taking a breath while eating

"No need to snap? No NEED to SNAP?" Lily's voice grew louder, and her face brighter as anger consumed her "My best friends for YEARS have finally told me that I can't be a girl and are making me prove I can be a girl so as ditching me in the process!" and with that, she picked up her bag and stormed out of the Great Hall.

She was in such a bad mood, she walked past the charms and was half way up Ravenclaw tower until she realized this. She had to sprint all the way back to the charms class so as not to be late. As it was, she only just managed to tag onto the last person entering the classroom as it was. She walked through the doorway then stopped, not knowing who to sit next too. She scanned the classroom, finally spotting Felicity, Claudia and Patience at a table with Felicity waving at her to get her attention.

Lily made her way over to them, dodging a paper aeroplane and ignoring Sirius. When she reached them, she realized there were only three seats and those three seats were taken.

"Um, there's only three seats" Lily said to them, puzzled. She didn't see the point in them calling her over if they didn't have a seat for her. Felicity had turned to Patience.

"Leave us" she commanded and Patience's face had shock written all over it.

"WHAT!" she exclaimed at them, her mouth gaping "I was here before you even discovered Lily and now, and now! And now your just, ditching me!"

"Umm, yeah. That's pretty much it. And to tell you the truth, you will never become me. And unlike you, Lily isn't even trying to be me! Lily's hot, your not. I'm sorry. Buh by now!" Felicity waved at her. Lily could see her face flush with anger.

"So this is it huh? After years of being friends you're going to ditch me just like that?"

"Pretty much"

"Fine" she said with a quick sob as she picked up her books and fled down the rows of desks to a seat on the other side of the classroom. Lily sat down on the vacated seat just as Professor Flitwick called for order.

The lesson passed fairly quickly for Lily as they were practicing summoning and banishing charms which Lily was good at, if she said so herself. However, sitting next to Felicity and Claudia it was a whole different experience.

"_Accio _Windy City Pretty" Claudia commanded before sitting back down in her chair, waiting for it to arrive.

"What's that?" Lily asked, searching the room to find something that fits that description.

"Its nail polish, duh! We always do our nails in charms" Felicity said while banishing the pillows which where the objects supposed to be summoned and banished. The doors of the classroom opened and a little bottle zoomed across the classroom towards them, before landing in front of Claudia.

"Claudia is an expert with colours. This is the one that suits me the most" Felicity simpered as she stuck her hands out onto the desk.

"Let me see your hands" Claudia said to Lily who immediately stuck her hands our as well to let Claudia examine them. She gasped.

"What have you done to your nails? This is going to take longer then I expected. I'll have to do them tonight. What have you done to your nail beds?"

"I dunno" Lily said, trying to think of a good excuse but failing miserably.

"The poor thing doesn't have any clothes either" Felicity added "She was forced to bring her sister's clothes because they were moving house and so she couldn't unpack them in time. I took pity and gave her a pair of my pajamas as her sisters were covered in fungi!" Lily nodded.

"Well, don't worry. You will be our new project!" Claudia said happily, and she and Felicity clapped their hands.

"Project! We will style your hair, tell you what colours suit your skin and complexion and help you buy a whole new wardrobe!"

"Great!" Lily said, thinking how this would wipe the smirk of Sirius's face.

"Great! We'll do it on the weekend! Slumber party! Yay!"

_A/N: Hey guys, sorry it isn't as long as my others but I figured you deserved to read something after waiting a while. But after posting this I'm going to start on the next chapter which will be longer!! Cross my heart. __Sorry for the long wait, just finished end of term stuff, exam __exam__, assignment exam the usual though all over now! On __hols__woop__woop__! Anyways, thanks to __MRide__emeraldeye__, Maxie1514, __mEGGIE__, Brazilian Princess, Mad Over Mooney, CASOCCERCHIC02, Prankster 4 life, Pyromaniac-Girl, Dazzled1, __Anso__ and __prongsies.lady__ for reviewing!! _


	5. Frills and Lace

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything to do with Harry Potter in any of my ****fanfics**** except for my original characters however I wish I did.**

_**A/N: Because you guys were fantastic reviewers for the last chapter, I'm posting this one quicker then expected. Enjoy!**_

_Chapter 5:__ Frill's and Lace_

The rest of the week dragged so slowly for Lily it was as though it was standing still.

'If a week is this slow, I wonder how slow a whole year is' she thought to herself on the way down to dinner Friday night. She had just returned from a much needed time by herself in the prefects bathroom (Since Claudia was a prefect, she told them the password as the ordinary bathrooms where 'awful!') which had given her a chance to escape from the act.

"There you are! We were wondering where you got to" Lily had long ago taught herself to suppress the groan as Claudia and Felicity caught up to her.

"So what do you think will be for dinner? I hope its not too fattening" Felicity said as the walked down the marble staircase, jumping the trick stair.

"I know! Last night we had Sheppard's Pie and that has pastry and potato, I mean, how fattening can you get?" Lily replied as they joined the crowd of people making their way into the Great Hall.

"And it clashed horribly with my no carb diet. That meal was just full of it!" Claudia complained as they walked over to the Gryffindor table.

"Well, I think your diet's safe, it looks like we're having lamb chops tonight" Felicity said as they sat down at their usual places. Lily and Felicity waited for Claudia to serve herself before serving themselves a little more than what she had to look as though her diet was working.

"Mmmm Lily, I meant to tell you before. This morning in Herbology, James Potter was SO totally checking you out!" Claudia exclaimed in the middle of dinner.

"Oh my God, no way!" Lily shrieked, practically jumping up and down in her seat.

"Total way! He kept staring at you from across the classroom with a totally weird expression on his face" Felicity added after clearing her mouth of food.

"And you two would look totally cute together!" Claudia added, putting her fingers in a sort of rectangle and staring at Lily threw it first, then at James who was sitting a little further up the table and then back at Lily.

"You think?" Lily asked shyly, looking down at her food and then back at Claudia

"Well, probably not as much as how good Roy and I look together, but better then what Felicity and Remus would look" Claudia thought, before having another mouthful of food.

"Hey!" Felicity exclaimed with a look of hurt on her face and Claudia shrug her shoulders.

"What can I say? He was my boyfriend first so he will always look better with me then with you" she replied logically.

"I guess" Felicity sighed before taking a larger then normal mouthful of mash potato. Once finished she turned to Lily.

"Hey Lily, has your mum sent you your clothes yet?" Lily had thought about this answer good and hard and came to an easy option; what would Petunia say?

"No, and mum figured because I would want to buy some more clothes anyway there was no point sending them here which means I have some serious shopping to do!" Claudia cleared her throat.

"We have a full weekend ahead of us ladies. We have to help Lily shop, do something with her hair and do her nails. We better head up to bed; we'll have to wake up bright and early tomorrow morning" Claudia stood up and the others followed suit.

"Ah, I'll meet you guys up there in a minute. I, ah, want to do something first" Lily said. Claudia nodded and she and Felicity walked out of the hall. Once out of sight, Lily bolted to the free seat next to James.

"Why where you staring at- OOOOO pudding!" she exclaimed and started loading the bowl in front of her with it. James and the others just stared at her as if she was off her rocker.

"Er Lily? You might want to slow up a little. You kinda need to breath to live and, uh, you don't seem to be breathing" Remus said as Lily stuffed spoonful after spoonful into her mouth while her friends watched her with a look of disgust on their face which was saying something since Sirius did something of that sort at least once a week. Finally Lily slowed up enough to explain.

"I have been without pudding for six ruddy days including the night we arrived here I think I am entitled to stuff my face," she exclaimed. Sirius had a look of shock on his face but Lily didn't know whether it was the fact that she wasn't acting like a girl at the moment or the fact that poor Lily Evans had gone six days without any kind of pudding.

"What where you saying before you launched into the pudding?" James asked Lily as she polished off the bowl.

"Oh! Yeah, why where you staring at me in Herbology this morning?" A little more colour flooded into James cheeks but nobody but him noticed. Lily continued to stare at him.

"Well, why wouldn't I stare at you? Especially if you were discussing wand curling techniques without throwing up"

Lily groaned.

-:-

Lily was woken earlier then she would have liked for a Saturday morning by Felicity. She managed to pull her herself out of bed and into the bathroom where she successfully put on mascara for the first time in her life without poking herself in the eye with the stick. Felicity had given her a mini dress with a little tie and some sandals to wear for the day, making Lily wear a dress for the second time in her life.

She meet the others down in the common room, which was silent so early in the morning, except the noises coming from a chess board where a knight was beating the crap out of a pawn.

"I'm so glad we can go to Hogsmeade any weekend now" Felicity said happily as they walked towards the entrance. Lily hadn't expected them to stop for breakfast and was right.

"I know, last time I had to wait, like, three months, to buy my spring wardrobe!" Claudia complained as they descended down to the Entrance Hall and looked longingly into the Great Hall before they walked out the front doors.

"So where are we going to go first?" Lily asked as they entered the small town, looking up and down the main street.

"Where do you think? Only the hottest fashion spot: Condé Nast!" Claudia exclaimed, grabbing Lily's elbow and leading her up the high street. Lily looked longingly in the windows of Honeydukes and Zonko's as they walked past, wanting to give anything in the world to go inside.

Claudia steered her down a little lane, past Madam Puddifoot's little coffee shop and paused in front of a glass window with two dummies in it wearing the latest fashion and changing their pose every fifteen seconds.

"I don't think its open" Lily stated, looking at her watch which read 7:42 am.

"Nonsense" Claudia said, climbing up the stares that led to the shop door and delicately rapped on the door. Lily heard shuffling from the back of the store and then the clink of high heels on tiles towards the door. The women opened the door a fraction, letting a stench of perfume out on the street.

The woman had long, sandy blonde hair that was tied up in a lose, fashionable bun at the back of her head, she was wearing a white blouse with some frills down the front and a mini denim skirt and 2 inch heels. Her manicured hands were wrapped around the door frame as she stuck her head threw the small gap.

"Oh Claudia, darhling! How are you?" she exclaimed before swinging the door open and kissing her on both cheeks.

"Good Doris! But my friend Lily on the other hand isn't. She needs to buy a whole new wardrobe and she wants the best of the best. Can you help?"

"Of course I can darhling, you know I can!" Doris and Claudia linked arms and Doris led her into the store.

"Claudia and Doris seem to know each other quite well" Lily commented as she and Felicity followed them inside.

"Well she should, she was her father's fifth wife" Felicity said as they wove between the racks.

"Her father had five wives!" Lily exclaimed in hush tones as they slowly followed.

"No, he's definitely had more" Felicity said with a thinking look on her face "Not sure how many, lost count" she shrugged as they caught up with Claudia and Doris.

"Anyway, Doris, this is Lily" Claudia introduced, turning and pointing at Lily. Doris stared at Lily, fingers under her chin as she surveyed her.

"Do come this way; I know the perfect place to start"

Lily sighed. It was going to be a really long day.

-:-

Lily stripped off her third mini skirt, placed it back on its coat hanger and reached for the next one which hung over the changing room door.

"I think I'm going to need some tops to wear with the skirts" Lily commented as she had already spent at least half an hour trying on bottoms.

"Of course you're going to need some tops! But we'll do all the bottoms first, so we know what tops will match," Felicity explained before gasping as Lily walked out of the changing room in another mini skirt, striking a pose.

"You look gorgeous darhling!" Doris exclaimed, her hands clasped together.

"You think so?" Lily asked her, though she knew she would have to rely on herself for that answer, shop assistants were so untrustworthy.

"Of course, and they make your legs look beautiful!" Lily looked down at her pale legs.

"But my legs are going to freeze to death in winter!" Lily complained, thinking how on earth Felicity and Claudia didn't feel the cold.

"You're not going to be wearing that in winter silly! This is your summer wardrobe, you still need to try on winter clothes and accessories and my personal favourite, shoes!" Claudia exclaimed coming back from another rack with an armful of clothes and dumping them in Lily's arms.

"These are some more clothes that I personally think you will look fab in," Claudia said as she walked back to stand next to Doris and Felicity. Lily returned back to the dressing room which had conveniently grown more hooks for her to hang the clothes off. She looked through the bunch of clothes and spied something that was actually to her taste: jeans!

She ripped the coat hanger off them, pulled off the skirt she had on and dumped it on the floor before sticking one foot, then the other into the jeans. All was going well until she got to her hips. Lily knew her hips weren't that big so she came to the conclusion that the jeans were too small. She tried pulling them up again, thinking that they might be made of stretch material. The got over her thighs but they refused to go up past her backside.

"Um, these jeans are too small" Lily called out from the dressing room, still struggling with the jeans.

"Nonsense," said Claudia "They're the right size I checked" and with that she pushed back the curtain to Lily's changing room, catching Lily by surprise.

"Well, there's your problem right there" Claudia said, gesturing to her underwear.

"My underwear?" Lily asked puzzled, looking down at them then back up at Claudia, more confused then ever.

"Duh! They're totally the wrong type of underwear to wear with those jeans" Felicity piped up from where she had come up from behind Claudia.

"You mean there is more then one type of underwear?" Lily asked them confused. She had never been underwear shopping, permitting her mother to buy her what she needed. The other three laughed.

"Gee you make me laugh sometimes" Felicity said after they had finished laughing.

"Doris, I think we should take Lily underwear shopping first before she tries on anymore clothes," Claudia announced to Doris, who nodded her head.

"Yes I think that's best, where were you thinking of going?" Doris asked Claudia.

"I think we should go to _Frills and Lace_. That's the best underwear store in Hogsmeade isn't it?"

Lily tuned out before Doris replied as she heard the name of the underwear store. She had one rule for her mother when she went shopping and that was 'No frills, No lace'. And now she felt as if she was in over her head.

"Lily!" Felicity said, bringing her back to reality.

"Oh sorry, tuned out for a second there" Lily said, turning back to face them all.

"Just get changed back into what you had on while we go across the road," Claudia ordered, turning to Doris to talk about holding the clothes.

Once Lily came out of the dressing room, Claudia and Felicity ushered her across the street to _Frills and Lace_. They sun was fully risen in the sky, waking the little town and causing all the shops to be opened by now.

Claudia pushed open the door and was instantly greeted by a young woman who kissed her on both cheeks.

"Please tell me that's not another of her father's many wives" she whispered to Felicity as they entered after her again.

"God no. That's Pamela her cousin" Felicity replied, giving her a strange look.

"How many family members does she have in Hogsmeade?" Lily whispered as Pamela lead them into the main part of the store.

"Just the two of them," Felicity said before they caught up with Pamela and Claudia.

"Lily what's your size?" Claudia asked her after finishing her conversation with Pamela.

"My size?" Lily asked confused.

"Yeah, you know, A, B, C, D? 32, 34?" Claudia asked her tapping her foot.

"I dunno, I'll check my tag," Lily said, but Felicity came up behind her and pulled the tag out before she could get there herself.

"You're a 32C" Felicity told her and Pamela left instantly to start roaming the racks. She came back a few minutes later, holding them out for Claudia to see.

"Hmm they're all good except for those mauve and pink ones," Claudia told her. Pamela dropped them in a pile and hung the rest in a change room.

"Well, go in and try them on" Claudia ordered and Lily walked in, making sure the curtain was fully closed before trying on the first one. She picked up the one on top which was black with pink lace weaved in up the top.

A minute or so later Claudia demanded "Have you got it on yet?" Lily who was just taking it off paused in surprise.

"What? You want to see me in it?"

"Duh course," Claudia said and Lily had a mental image of her with her arms crossed and tapping her foot.

"Just a minute!" Lily called, clipping it back up again, took a deep breath and pulled open the curtain to come face to face with the three of them. Pamela instantly went over to her, pulling up the strap.

"No, this won't do" she muttered as she fussed over Lily who was feeling quite self conscious.

"What's that?" Claudia said sharply, obviously hearing what Pamela was saying.

"This is two small for her, see here and here" Pamela gestured and Claudia nodded "I'll get these in a 32 D" she said, picking up the stack and coming back with the new ones.

"Just so you know, I thought you looked hot in that bra" Felicity whispered in her ear before she went back into the change room. Lily didn't know whether to be happy or scared.

-:-

The day continued the same after that. After the underwear shopping, they went back to Doris who told Lily which pairs of underwear to wear with the different items of clothing. After that Claudia led them over to Hinda Honovi's Hair where she got Hinda to cut and style Lily's hair. Once Lily was allowed to open her eyes she say her hair was now just past her shoulders, it had a layer or two and it was straight. Lily thought she actually looked good. Then they waltzed across the road to Wildana's Witchy Nails where they all sat down and talked while Wildana and her assistances did the girl's nails.

After this was done it was around two o clock in the afternoon and Lily who hadn't eaten all day was feeling surprisingly faint and wondered how they managed this. Thankfully, Claudia steered them into the Three Broomsticks. Lily ordered water and a chicken and avocado wrap. Claudia and Felicity just ordered water.

After they watched Lily eat, Felicity insisted that she change into some of her new clothes before they left to go back to Hogwarts. She led Lily to the bathroom at the back of the pub where Lily went in and searched the many bags in her backpack for the skinny jeans she had fallen in love with and her 'Mildred the Muggle' tee. She put on her black ankle boots and a silver bracelet as well before walking back into the pub.

"Wow, you sure are good at accessorizing" Felicity commented as they walked back down the main street, Lily looking longingly into the windows of Zonko's and Honeydukes as they walked past.

"Yeah well, I have inspiration" Lily shrugged and they continued up the driveway. Lily broke the silence when they reached the front doors.

"I think I'll go for a walk before dinner, you know, to burn off that wrap" Lily said, stopping in her tracks.

"Good idea. See you there" Felicity said and Claudia and her climbed up the stairs. Lily turned around and began walking back the way they came, glancing over her shoulder now and then to make sure Claudia or Felicity hadn't come back down.

She walked as fast as she could in her new boots all they way back to Hogsmeade and bolted into Honeydukes. She grabbed a bag and began loading handful after handful of sweets into the bag. She filled it to the top of the bag, all her favourite sweets inside. After she paid, she shrunk it and made sure she was the only one who could see it.

She exited, walked up the main street a way, and then ducked into Zonko's. She paused for a minute in the doorway, lost in thought. Candy she could get away with. Itching powder and painful instruments might be a bit harder to explain, plus she wouldn't have any use for them anyway.

She walked back up the high street to the driveway, popping a chocolate frog in her mouth as she did so. It was getting late so she decided to go straight to dinner instead of trying to find the others.

She walked through to the Great Hall and along the Gryffindor table looking for someone she knew. She spied Remus, Sirius and James sitting along the far side of the Gryffindor table and she walked over to the empty spot next to Remus and sat down, starting to load her plate with food.

"Do I know you?" Remus asked her once he noticed her sitting there.

"Course you do dickhead" Lily snorted without looking at them.

"You know, that voice sounds somewhat familiar yet I just can't place it" James said, with a thinking expression on his face which scared Remus.

"You better recognize this voice" Lily joked, taking a sip of pumpkin juice.

"Do you ever get that feeling when you're supposed to know something but you don't and its all awkward? Well I've kinda got that feeling right now" James said to Remus who nodded. Sirius, who had been focusing on his dinner, looked up and said

"Woah! Do I know you? Let me introduce myself, I am Sirius Black," he said, holding out his hand.

"Nice to meet you Sirius Black. Again," Lily said, shaking his hand and turning back to her food.

"Wait, you didn't tell me your name!" Sirius cried out in a hurt voice. Lily, who had finished her dinner turned to him and said

"It's me Lily, you arsehole" And with that she walked out of the Great Hall, flicking her hair and leaving Sirius with a shocked look on his face.

"Don't worry Sirius, she fooled us all, there's no need to look THAT shocked" Remus said, turning back to his dinner.

"Well, obviously you guy's didn't see her wearing a gee-string"


	6. Suspicious Lemons

_Disclaimer:__ Me do not own_

_A/N: HAVE A VERY MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR YALL!_

_Chapter 6:__ Suspicious Lemons _

The next day Lily was lying on her back, face up on her bed, throwing a tennis ball up and down, and every so often, dipping her hand in the bag of candy that was on the bed beside her. Suddenly, she heard the door to the dorm open and she skillfully threw the ball under Jessica's bed and brushed the bag of candy onto the floor, kicking it under her bed as she stood up to greet her friends.

"There you are Lily, we were wondering where you got to!" Felicity said, running over to her bed and bounced on it before slowing down to a stop. Claudia gracefully walked over to her bed and sat down on the corner of her own bed.

"So what shall we do today?" Felicity asked Claudia and Claudia thought for a moment.

"Well," she started slowly "The boy's are celebrating the end of summer by daring each other to go for a dip in the lake. We could go watch?"

"Ooo boy's in trunks. Count me in" Felicity giggled and bounced on the bed. Lily, who had seen Sirius, Remus and James in trunks numerous times, didn't really see the point but replied anyway

"Me too. I can never resist boys in swimmers"

And so off they went, Claudia in the middle, as always, as they walked down to the lake. The boys had used the rocks the castle had been built on which staggered out over the lake as diving ledges.

The girls joined the small group of people gathered on the shore and sat down to view the show. A few minutes into the jumping, Lily spied a familiar pair of white legs. She stared at them closely and saw her three other 'friends' at the 100m jump mark. Even this far away, Lily could see Remus's legs shaking.

"Isn't he soooo brave?" Felicity gushed, obviously talking about Remus but Lily wouldn't have used that word to describe the shaking pale legs.

Eventually James pushed Remus off, who screamed at the top of his lungs as he plunged down, belly flopping into the lake. James laughed in triumph and the smile was still playing off his lips as Sirius pushed him off, however, James made a more, well, less painful entry, curling himself up into a ball and bombing into the lake, spraying the closest to him with water.

Sirius celebrated his victory of being the last man standing by flexing his muscles, so much so, he was preoccupied with them and soon lost his balance and he feel off, twisting in the air and landing in the water on his back. The crowd all made the same 'oo that's gotta hurt' noise as they heard him hit the water.

Lily turned her attention back to Remus who was coming out of the water and surprisingly saw Felicity walking up with him.

"Are you sure you're okay Remmy?" She was saying to him as they came up to where everyone was sitting. Lily saw him nod at her and walk off, with a bewilded expression on his face.

"Poor Remus," Lily muttered to herself before Felicity arrived.

"That was so nasty of James to push him off like that. I mean, like he was about to jump off anyway, it's not as if he needed his help," Felicity complained as she sat down and Lily and Claudia nodded in agreement.

"Totally," Lily added "And it serves James right to be pushed in by Sirius," Felicity nodded and it seemed to Lily that Claudia's head had snapped up when she said Sirius's name but thought nothing of it, after all she only just got her female intuition.

As all the boy's had jumped into the lake, many of the bystanders had gone back up to the castle, others starting to get up.

"We should probably go and see where Patience ended up. I was sure she came down here to watch," Felicity said thoughtfully as they stood up and headed off towards the castle.

"So what are we going to do this afternoon?" Lily asked Claudia and Felicity after they returned to the dorm, found Patience in the bathroom who claimed to be touching up her make-up and were now lying down on their beds.

"Well I've got to do that horrid charms essay that's due Monday," Felicity moaned, rolling over and hitting her pillow in anger.

"I think I'm going to have some me time," Claudia said thoughtfully "Lily, why don't you help Felicity, you seem to be quite good at charms?" she suggested sweetly.

"Sure," Lily said and she and Felicity grabbed their bags and headed downstairs to the common room to start.

"So what part are you having trouble with?" Lily asked as they sat down at one of the tables.

"Gah like the whole thing! I know what I want to say, but then I can't get it onto the damn paper!" Felicity complained to Lily, pouting.

"Have you ever thought of using a Thought Charm?" Lily suggested. Felicity gave her a blank expression.

"Basically it transfer's your thoughts onto the paper so you can unjumble them and put them into your essay," Lily explained and Felicity's face lit up like a light bulb.

"OO! Do it!" Felicity order, closing her eyes and smiling. Lily took out her wand, pointed it at Felicity's head and said

"Premura"

Felicity's head glowed for a second and then returned back to normal. She opened her eyes and her quill instantly sprung up and began writing on the page. Felicity smiled.

"Are you alright now?" Lily asked "I've just got to go to the library to double check something,"

Felicity nodded her head vigorously, concentrating intently on her thoughts. Lily grabbed her book bag off the chair and headed out of the portrait hole. She decided to take the long way, as she was in no hurry to return. However, half way down a corridor she spied James and Sirius coming towards her, so she made a quick side step into the secret passage hidden behind the tapestry of some old witches drinking tea.

She hurried down the stairs and turned the corner but stopped when she recognized the voices around the corner.

"What on earth are you talking about Patience?" she heard a voice ask.

"I'm telling you, she's not who she says she is?" Patience whispered hurridly.

"How is she not?" the voice asked, not taking Patience word for it.

"I found these under her bed," Patience said. Lily heard the rustling of a plastic bag being shoved into a person's hand.

"Sugar free I presume?" the voice said carelessly, not believing what was in the bag was enough proof.

"No it is totally filled with it. Here, try one," Lily heard more rustling and the sound of chewing. Then came the sound of 'UH!' followed by the sound of spitting.

"Your right! Its totally full of sugar! But I still don't believe it, she could be treating herself, after all, she has a fantastic metabolism, have you seen those curves?"

"Sure she has a good figure, but I found this as well," Patience said, pulling something out of her pocket and bouncing it, the echo of a ball bouncing on stone echoing threw the passageway.

"And where pray tell did you find this?" the voice said and Lily could almost picture the person crossing their arms.

"Under Jessica's bed but it's pretty obvious it rolled over from her bed,"

"Oh yes, so obvious. Why, did you get down and see if the floor was level?" the voice snorted.

"Look at the initial's on the ball, here, _lumos_!"

"So their the same, their very common initials. I know several people with the same,"

"Name some," Patience sneered.

"Lara Edinston in Ravenclaw, Lisa Everard in Slytherin and Lindsay Edwards in Hufflepuff just to name a few," the voice returned the sneer.

"Okay, well I have one more piece of evidence that you can't ignore,"

Lily heard Patience unfolding a piece of paper and heard it change hands. This was quickly followed by a gasp.

"See?"

"Is she really wearing clothes from Target?" the voice exclaimed, disgusted.

"Yep, she sure is,"

"Well, I'm sure there is a good excuse for this but I do say this is quite fishy. I'll just have to keep my eyes open around her to see if she is really who she says she is,"

Light suddenly flooded the passageway and Lily quickly ducked behind the corner until they had shut the portrait. Unwilling to go threw the same exit as it may cause suspicion, Lily headed back up the way she came. Of course James and Sirius were long gone and the rest of her walk to the library was uneventful. She found the book she was searching for quite easily and went and sat down at a table to read it.

It was only when she had read the same sentence six times that she realized she couldn't concentrate. She slammed the book shut and rested her chin on her folded arms, thinking about what happened. She knew the sweets that Patience found, they were the sherbet lemon's she had been eating earlier this morning before going to watch the guys jump of the cliff. The ball was of course the one she was throwing up in the air, but it was the photo that stumped her, because she couldn't remember even owning a picture of herself, let alone one where she was wearing clothes from Target.

So that's what Patience had been up to this morning, Lily knew it was fishy that Patience of all people would have given up a trip to see the guys down at the lake.

Lily sighed, then banged her forehead on her book, getting a nasty look from the librarian, an old witch called 'Madam Denzil'. What type a name that was was a mystery to Lily, she thought it sounded rather funny actually.

"You alright there?" A voice asked from behind her. Lily turned around and found it was Jessica, the other girl from her dorm. "I saw Madam Denzil give you one of her glares so I thought you might be in a bit of trouble. This seat free?" she asked, motioning to the chair next to Lily's. She nodded silently, turning back to face the front.

"So your curious about Hogwarts history then?" Jessica asked her, noticing the book in front of Lily. Lily reopened Hogwarts: A History and sighed.

"Yep, I'm trying to see if there's another case of what's happening to me right now. See if they can give me any pointers if they actually pulled it off," Lily explained and began to open pages at random.

"So what's your case? Oh!" she said quickly "Sorry, none of my business. My mum's always going on about how curiosity killed the cat. Its probably true, whatever my mother says usually happens. God I hate when that happens. I also suffer from frequent 'footnmouth' disease so I have to be careful about what I say," She explained and Lily laughed.

"No its alright, I think their onto me anyway so I don't think it will really matter that much," Lily said to Jessica and she listened intently as Lily retold her story.

"So why do you think their on to you?" Jessica asked when Lily finished.

"On my way down here I heard Patience talking to who I'm pretty sure was Claudia about the stuff she found this morning when she went threw my things. She found my stash of sherbet lemons, my tennis ball I play with when I'm bored and some photo of me that I didn't even own and I was apparently wearing clothes from Target,"

"God Lily, Target? How could you sink so low? I only buy clothes from Targe!" Jessica joked, making Lily smile.

"Anyway, so I don't know what I'm going to do," Lily said sadly, returning to resting her chin on her arms.

"Well you've got me to help you now! Aren't you lucky?" She said nudging Lily. "Now, lets see, I gave those sherbet lemon's to you for your birthday but you said I could help myself to them whenever I'd like so they all belong to me. The tennis ball that has your initial's on it belongs to my step sister Lucy Edwards who's father married my mother two years ago and I stole the ball from her. And as for the photo, say it was your Halloween costume!" Jessica suggested, making Lily raise her head.

"Wow, that's not half bad Jessica!" Lily said in amazement.

"Oh, well, you know," Jessica said, pretending to blush. "So am I your outside man now or what?" she then demanded

"I guess so, if you want to be," Lily replied, shutting the book and getting up.

"Are you kidding? Of course I want to be, I get to hear about all the stupid stuff they talk about and all the stuff they do to get guys!" Jessica cried happily as Lily returned the book to the shelf.

"Awesome. So as my outside man, you are also in charge of giving me food. I have been literarily starved to death since I arrived here!" Lily complained. Jessica put a hand on Lily's shoulder.

"I feel your pain,"

-:-

Lily returned to the common room a short time later to see Felicity still there leaning over her piece of parchment.

"So how's the thought spell working out for you?" Lily asked, dumping her bag on the ground and sinking into the armchair across from her.

"Oh its fantastic, thank you so much Lily!" Felicity exclaimed before getting back to her homework. Lily had just gotten herself comfortable in her chair when Patience came and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Oh, hello Patience" Lily said in a sickly sweet voice as she turned to face her.

"Hello Lily," Patience said in the same voice "Claudia wants to see you upstairs in the dormitory. Now" She grabbed Lily's arm and led her over to the staircase. Lily pulled away.

"I assure you Patience, I can get to the dormitory quite safely on my own," Lily snapped, pushing past her and climbed the stairs to the dorm. She knocked twice on the door before letting herself either. Claudia was sitting on her bed and stood up when Lily entered.

"Hey Lily," She said as she walked over and they did their usual greeting hug.

"Patience said you wanted to see me?" Lily said, this scene looking more and more like she was a naughty child called to come see her mother.

"Yes. Unfortunately Patience went threw your belongings this morning-" Lily made herself look surprised before horrified.

"What business does she have going threw my belongings without asking?" Lily interrupted.

"Yes I quite agree, however she found a number of disturbing items that I would like to discuss with you," Claudia said, motioning to the bed. Lily sat.

"If you insist, I have nothing to hide." Claudia smiled and sat down next to her.

"First of all, she found a packet of non sugar free sherbet lemons under your bed," she paused, waiting for the explanation. Lily forced herself to laugh.

"I had totally forgotten about those! Jessica gave them to me for my birthday last year and of course, not knowing what to do with them I placed them under my bed,"

"They were half empty," Claudia pressed.

"Of course, I expected nothing less. I offered Jessica that she could eat some when ever she liked. There is no point for foot to go to waste," Lily said and Claudia nodded. Lily mentally wiped her brow, that's one problem she had wormed her way out off.

"Secondly, she found this ball with your initials on it," Claudia said, pulling it out of her pocket and showing it to Lily.

It was then that Jessica had chosen to enter the room, and Lily couldn't think of a better moment for her to do so.

"What are you doing with my ball?" she asked Claudia. Claudia looked up in surprise.

"Sorry?"

"My ball, the one your holding," she said, pointing at it.

"If it's yours then why does it have the initials L.E. on it?" Claudia asked her, suspiciously.

"Well, technically it's my step- sister's. Her name's Lucy Edwards, her father married my mother sometime ago and well, I needed something to amuse me on the train so I took her ball. Can I have it back now?" she asked Claudia. Claudia threw it to her.

"Well, there was one last thing she found," Claudia said, pulling out a photo of Lily taken that past summer with her father.

"Oh put that photo away, it brings back horrible memories!" Lily cried, springing off the bed in surprise.

"I don't doubt that, your wearing clothes from Target!" Claudia stated, looking disgusted.

"What's wrong with clothes from Target?" Jessica asked. Claudia and Lily rolled their eyes.

"That picture is from Halloween last year. I hadn't bought a costume and my parents were forcing me to dress up so I took some of my sister's clothes. I spent three hours in the bathroom afterwards scrubbing my skin, it was awful!"

"You poor thing! I told Patience there was a reasonable explanation for all of this! I'm sorry I ever doubted you, I think Patience needs to pay a price," Claudia said, hugging Lily and then heading back down to the common room.

Lily walked over to the door, making sure she wasn't still there and shut the door, and turned back to face Jessica.

"Three hours ay?" she smirked as she high fived Lily.

"So do you think I deserve an Oscar or what?"

"What's an Oscar?"

Lily laughed.

_A/N: Hey __hey__, I'm back! I'm so sorry __its__ been months, but you know, end of school exams, __gah__ so draining. Anyway, I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and a happy new year for tomorrow! Try and update soon, I've got a bit of thinking to do on this story, so I hope this chapter was worth the wait, I'm trying to throw some suspicion into the air ...__ooooo__. Any suggestions let me know. Anyway, thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, I got a whopping 22 reviews! So thank you thank you thanks you! __Until next time..._

_Moonlight Honeysuckle __xox_


	7. Food! Glorious Food!

_Disclaimer: __Unfortunately, under the circumstances I am not allowed to declare that this is my original work and any fool who accuses me of announcing it is all mine, well it will be OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! _

Chapter 7: Food! Glorious Food!

"I'll meet you on the other side of the portrait hole," Jessica said, winking before leaving Lily alone in the dorm. Lily waited there for a bit, then got up and left as well. When she entered the common room she saw Felicity still over in the corner, head bent down over her charms homework, Remus was over near the fire reading some book and there were several first years with their heads over some Gobstones. However she couldn't see Claudia or Patience anywhere.

Lily sighed and walked threw the portrait hole, she would have to go threw her things later to make sure Patience didn't find anything else suspicious. She couldn't see Jessica anywhere, but she decided to walk along the corridor and see if she was waiting at the corner.

She was about to pass a suit of armor when a person jumped out and yelled "BOO!" Lily screamed until she saw Jessica sniggering.

"Bitch," she muttered and Jessica laughed and led her down to the Entrance Hall.

"Why thank you Jessica for showing me where the Great Hall is. Is that where you eat? I had no idea," Lily said sarcastically, hiding her disappointment that Jessica didn't have a better plan to get her food.

"Gosh, you have no faith," Jessica groaned, grabbing her arm and pulling her down to the basement and leading her down a corridor before stopping in front of a painting of a fruit bowl.

"I'm going to be eating paint?" Lily asked her puzzled "Watercolors, my favourite,"

"Tut tut no more sarcasm," Jessica, clicking her tongue. Lily grimaced.

"Sorry, its been so since I've been able to have a decent convosation," Lily said and Jess smiled sympathetically. "Don't worry, your outsider is on the job!" she said, saluting.

She walked towards the painting and she stuck her finger out towards the painting, and she did, what looked to Lily, was if she tickled the picture of the pear.

She heard a giggle echo from somewhere before the whole wall slid open, revealing a room bustling with activity.

"Wow," said Lily as she walked inside, "Where are we?"

"I present to you, Lily Evans, the Kitchens of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Jessica said dramatically as she followed Lily inside. Instantly, at least five house elves walked up to Lily and Jessica, all with towels over their arms.

"Can we helps you misses?" the one in front squeaked.

"Why yes, little people you can! I would like some food! But not just any food, I want food that isn't fat free!" Jessica said and they all grinned happily, and bustled away again. Another one came up to Lily and said

"If you'd care to follow me Misses," he said and Lily followed him further into the kitchen, where she saw four replicas of the house tables. She went down at sat down at the one directly under the Gryffindor table and Jessica joined her there.

Four house elves came bustling over, each holding different plates of food. The first one came over with a plate of toasted cheese sandwiches, another with a bowl of chips, the third came with a plate of pizza and the four placed a chocolate sundae on the table next to them.

"Wow, thank you!" Lily said to them, the one who brought the sundae giggled as they bowed and went away.

"Good service, ay?" Jessica said as Lily helped herself to a sandwich, Jessica took a spoon and began helping herself to the chocolate sundae.

"Oi, get your own," Lily snapped, and Jessica instantly put the spoon down.

"Someone sure hasn't eaten a decent meal in a while," Jessica observed and Lily nodded and said "Told ya"

Once Lily had eaten all she could, they decided to return to the common room, as Jessica pointed out that Claudia and Felicity would probably be wondering where she had got to. Jessica left Lily to go alone as she forgot to pick up a book she needed for potions at the library.

"Croutons" Lily said when she reached the Fat Lady, who nodded and swung open, revealing the room within. The first thing Lily noticed when she entered was that Felicity was no long in the corner working on her charms homework, which Lily thought was a rather good thing because she had been working on it all afternoon and it wasn't really that difficult. She climbed up to her dorm to find that Claudia and Felicity were both in there.

"Hey girlfriends!" Lily smiled and they did their usually greeting hugs. "All finished charms homework?"

"Sure did, thanks for that spell by the way, it was really a life saver,"

"No problem, its my job to help my friends," Felicity and Lily shared a smile. Claudia coughed and their turned their attention to her.

"Now Lily, I've seen to it that Patience has learnt her lesson. I don't think she will be bothering you any longer,"

"Why?" Lily asked curiously, "What did you do?"

"You'll see. You guys ready to go down to dinner?" Claudia asked and Lily's stomach curdled.

"You know what, I don't think I'll have any dinner tonight, I'm not really hungry," Lily said and the other's shrugged.

"Sure, whatever. See you when we get back, sooner if its deep fried," Claudia said as they bid her farewell.

Once Lily was alone she fell smack down on her bed. Her stomach groaned.

"Enjoy the feeling of fullness," she told it "It may be a while till you get another decent fill,"

She thought of the subjects she had tomorrow, which reminded her she hadn't done her 500word revision essay on the Summoning Charm.

She pulled her book bag onto her bed, pulled out a spare piece of parchment, her favourite quill and a bottle of ink and began to write. It took her just over fifteen minutes to complete it and she blew on it to make it dry faster. The door opened and Lily hurriedly put her essay in her bag and dumped it on the floor.

"Hey relax, its just me," said Jessica as she came over and sat on her bed next to Lily's. "What were you up to anyway?"

"Charms homework," Lily said, lying back on her bed.

"Wow, secretly doing homework. How could you?" Jessica said and laid down on her own bed.

"So have you talked to Potter, Black or Lupin recently?" Jessica asked after silence had consumed them.

"Not really, I saw them this morning, their white legs shaking 100 meters up but that's all," Lily said without moving, she didn't want to risk it.

"Are you allowed to talk to them?"

"I guess, but I don't really in particular. They did ditch me and I'm still getting over it. Why the sudden interest?" Lily managed to turn her head in Jessica's direction.

"I dunno, I've been pretty bored this year, well, the whole week we've been here. My friend moved to some country down south that I'd never heard of before and so I've basically been by myself. I need knowledge!"

"Haha, well, I'll be your friend. Well, when I'm not a wannabe," Lily said and Jessica sighed.

"Thank goodness. I thought I was going to have to be your friend when you were a wannabe! Lipstick is so no worth it,"

-:-

"Snap!" James cried and the cards exploded. When they'd cooled down, Remus picked them up and began to shuffle them again.

"He cheated!" Sirius yelled and James smugly shook his head.

"Did not!"

"Let me shuffle, then he won't win!" Sirius said to Remus, going to grab the cards from him but Remus pulled them away.

"See, Remus is my friend. He's going to give them to me to shuffle," James said, holding his hand out to take them but Remus just had a blank expression on his face. James frowned.

"How bout, I'll shuffle, so none of you can cheat, then we'll find a winner based on pure talent?" Remus suggested. Sirius and James looked at each other then burst out laughing.

"Where's the fun in that?" Sirius asked him bewilded. Remus groaned, knowing he was defeated, he threw the cards down on the table and got up and stretched his legs, looking at his watch as he did so.

"I think I'll go for a walk," he said to the others.

"You planning on getting caught by Pringle are we? Going for a walk at eleven at night?" James asked, not taking his eyes of the cards.

"No, I'm taking the map," Remus said, waving it in front of James's face but pulling it away before he could snatch it up.

"Ah, well at least it's not the cloak," James said in defeat.

"Oh, no," Remus laughed "I've got that in my bag," he said and bolted out of the portrait hole before James could grab his cape and drag him back.

As he walked along the corridor leading away from Gryffindor Tower he saw Felicity and Claudia coming towards him. He smiled politely at them and Felicity turned pink and giggled as she passed. However, when Remus returned from his walk, he was still confused as to why she always did that when he passed her.

-:-

The next day was Monday so it was back to classes and work. After breakfast (being half a banana), Claudia, Felicity and Lily headed towards the charm's classroom. Once they were seated, Professor Flitwick collected all their essay's and proceeded in marking them while he set some revision work on the black board.

Lily thought she did quite well in that lesson and was surprised to find she got an O on her homework. Claudia was going on how her homework had granted her an E and so Lily kept her mark quiet, she didn't want to rain on her parade. However Felicity was looking heartbroken as her essay had given her P.

As it was History of Magic next, Lily offered to read her charms essay. Felicity was too happy to reply, she just thrust her paper at Lily for her to read. Once Professor Binns had sunk into his usual monotone speech, Lily began to read.

_The Summoning Charm, well, it was first discovered by that guy, watshisname, the one with the grey hair... oh yes I remember now, his name was Charles Summon in 1478. The Summoning charm is very useful as OMG that guy is so cute, I think his a 7__th__ grader. No, Felicity concentrate, alright, back to the Summoning charm, its quite useful because it summons what you need. For example if I were sleeping over at a friends house and I wanted to colour her nails red but I only brought pink, I could summon the bottle to her house. The charm is quite simple as oh no! That hair is out of place, no no no no, this can't be happening, that cute guy is staring at me no wait, I know what I'll do, I'll flick my hair and it will fix it and it's a good flirting technique. Right here we go ... bingo! I totally pulled that off. Back to summoning, back to summoning. Well, I could write what the spell is, that's probably a good idea. The spell itself is pretty simple, you say the word 'Expecto' followed by what you want. Oh I so want that guy over there, do you think the summoning charm would work on him? Hmm couldn't hurt to try ... no. Absolutely not, I have to finish this homework if it's the last thing I do..._

Lily looked up from Felicity's essay, not needing to finish reading it to work out why she had gotten a P. In her opinion, by the looks of this essay it was if Professor Flitwick was marking her easily, judging by the fact on top of it she wrote the wrong incantation on it to boot.

She looked up and saw Felicity staring at her, quite hopefully. Lily gave her a small smile, then began to write helpful hints on the piece of parchment in front of her. She also made a mental note that if she was asked to perform the spell again on Felicity, it would only be thoughts on the subject, she didn't think the professors should suffer from the woes of a fifteen year old.

-:-

That night at dinner, she sat and watched Claudia and Felicity pick at their celery and carrot.

"God I wish I had your will power," Felicity complained, chomping on a piece of carrot "If I did I would have your figure,"

"It's pretty hard, you have to train yourself," Lily told her, secretly thinking about all the food she would be eating later tonight in the kitchens.

"I've trained myself to only have two small meals a day," Claudia boasted "And I haven't slipped up once!"

Lily and Felicity instantly bombarded her with praise and she smiled, taking it all in.

"So what did you do to Patience? I haven't seen her since she dragged me to you," Lily said, suddenly remembering the fourth.

"I wouldn't blame her for not coming out," Claudia said, taking another bite of celery, signaling the end of the matter. She finished the stick and she stood up and motioned for Felicity to do so afterwards.

"I need to go to the library, I haven't finished my potions homework that's due tomorrow," Lily told them as they stood up.

"Sure, whatever. See you upstairs? You never know, Patience might decide to show her face" Claudia said

"Definitely," Lily said and they left the hall. Lily waited a bit, before heading back out to the Entrance Hall. Quickly checking that they hadn't hung around, she bolted down to the basement. She ran straight to the 'Fruit Bowl', tickled the pear and burst into the kitchen. Jessica looked up startled from where she was sitting at the Gryffindor table.

"In a hurry much?" she asked and Lily plonked down next to her. A house elf suddenly appeared next to her, waiting expectantly for her to order.

"Oh, I'll have whatever they're having upstairs. But minus the salad," Lily said. The house elf bowed and hurried off, returning moments later with a small group of elves, all carrying plates full of food and placing it down in front of Lily.

"Thank you very much," Lily said and they all bowed, returning back to their work. Lily then began piling the plate in front of her with food, before sticking mouthful after mouthful into her mouth.

"You know the phrase 'slow down'? You might want to put that into practice about now," Jessica joked and Lily slowed.

"Sorry, I've been looking forward to this all day, don't pop my bubble," Lily said and Jessica stopped protesting however Lily did slow down.

"So anything happen today over at Camp Popular?" Jessica asked curiously.

"Well to help Felicity with her homework I put a Thought Spell on her to help her with her charms homework. But in between the actual describing of the charm which she refers to nail polish, she also keeps mentioning some 7th grader and how well she pulled of a hair flick," Lily told her between mouthfuls of pudding.

Jessica snorted. "Did she really hand that in to Professor Flitwick?"

"Yep-pa" Lily said, taking another mouthful of pudding.

"Oh poor Professor Flitwick! I feel so sorry for him to have to read something like that. What did he give her?"

"Oh he gave her a P,"

"Professor Flitwick," Jessica shook her head sadly "Always so kind"

"So you ready to head back up to the common room now?" Lily asked, finishing off the bowl

"I believe the proper question to ask is whether YOU are ready to go back to the common room," Jessica pointed out.

"Ah well, I've got to go sometime," Lily said sadly and they left the kitchen, first saying goodbye to the house elves.

"So dinner again tomorrow night?" Jessica asked before they turned into the corridor leading to Gryffindor Tower. They had decided it wasn't wise for them to be seen walking threw the portrait hole at the same time so to say goodbye a good distance away.

"I dunno if I could weasel two days in a room. It may seem a bit suspicious. Or, on the other hand, it could seem like I have fantastic self control. Hmm I don't think I can risk it, but Wednesday good?"

"Yeah, its not like I do anything else,"

"Well I'll see you back at the dorm," Lily said before waving goodbye and walking of down the corridor. She was about to reach the Fat Lady when somebody else came out first.

"Hey Remus," Lily said when she saw his bewilded face "What's up?"

"Felicity just asked me out," he said in a small voice, as if he didn't believe it himself.

"Oooo really? What did you say?" Lily asked him. Remus sank to the floor,

"You know what Lily? I was so shocked I don't remember moving but I think – I think I actually said yes!"

_A/N: And this signals the end of chapter. Exit here and here to go out and line up again to enjoy the ride again. Sorry, just happy, in a few days I'm going on a holiday to Sydney!! Woop! But don't my rapid readers worry their pretty little heads, the next chapter is already half written so shall be posted soon anyway! Alothough apologies to you all as I was supposed to post this yesterday I just got preoccupied with going to the movie's to see 'ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS'! For those sad enough like me to have seen that film, HOW CUTE WERE THEY!!!!!! Cough sorry, mature again... anyways please REVIEW!!!_

_Moonlight Honeysuckle xoxo_


	8. Failing Flirting

_Disclaimer:What a silly question, are you J.K Rowling? The famous author of the Harry Potter series, a novelist who inspires children to read by their work and is richer than the queen? Of course I am... In reality, no :(_

Chapter 8: Failing Flirting

The news that Remus was going out with Felicity spread threw the school like wildfire and by Halloween everyone had heard about it. Lily was more than happy for the couple, though she suspected that Remus wasn't the happiest about it and by the looks of it he wasn't the only one.

Claudia had been having her fair share of temper tantrums and ridiculous rages about the couple and Lily suspected it was the fact that Felicity was going out with HER ex and the fact that Remus actually said yes. Unbeknown to all this, Felicity was over the moon. It turned out that she had liked Remus for quite a while, even when, she confided in Lily, when Claudia was going out with him.

On Halloween morning Lily was sitting at the Gryffindor table by herself and looked up in time to see Felicity and Remus walking threw the doors holding hands. Lily smiled and waved at them when they got closer to sit with her.

"This week was our six week anniversary!" Felicity blurted out as they sat down across from her. Lily raised an eyebrow at Remus who shrugged. For someone who didn't really like the person he was going out with, Remus had been going out with her an awfully long time. Lily made a mental note to ask him at some point.

"Oh? Congratulations," Lily said to Felicity who was glowing in happiness.

"I know, right?" Felicity said without tearing her eyes away from Remus. Lily, who felt oddly uncomfortable made her excuse to Felicity (who probably was too busy staring at Remus to have heard her Lily thought later) and walked out into the Entrance Hall. At the bottom of the Marble staircase, she saw James and Sirius snickering. Curious, she went over and joined them.

"What's so funny?" Lily interrupted them in the middle of their laughing fit.

"Remus 'sniffle' is still 'snort' going out with 'hiccup' Felicity!" James managed to gasp out in between his snorts of laughter.

"Yeah, I just saw them in the Great Hall together. I'm glad I'm not Remus, I don't think I would be able to stand it to have a person staring at me like that for six weeks straight," Lily told them when they had calmed down.

"Yeah, well, we had expected Remus to have dumped her before now. But he's hanging in there longer than we thought. Hmm maybe we should raise the stakes?" Sirius said, turning to James who shrugged.

"Stakes?" Lily asked them curiously.

"We bet that Remus would have been the gentleman and have broken up with her ages ago when he got the courage to say no but you know Moony, always trying to defy nature. But I didn't think he would really last so long. But it has been god damn amusing for us!" James explained as a new serge of laughter over came Sirius.

"So what are you gonna bet to make him cave?"

"Nothing! It's worth losing 10 gallons to watch Felicity following him around like a puppy!" Sirius said happily and left, skipping up the marble staircase.

"What lesson have you got first?" James asked her once the sound of Sirius's singing had faded into the distance.

"Ancient Runes," Lily replied, who still had an eyebrow raised in the direction Sirius left in.

"Mind if I walk you there? Might give you something to talk about to Claudia and co." James offered and Lily speechlessly accepted, not knowing why James was being so nice to her.

"So having any fun being a girl?" James asked her, trying to break the ice that had seemed to consume them.

"Ah hah! So that's why you asked me if you could walk to class with me! You just want to get the dirt on what happens in the girls dormitory," Lily exclaimed, proud of herself for figuring it out. James just looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

"Not really. I was just trying to make conversation, if I wanted to find out what type of pajamas you wore I'd just go ask Patience," James said, smirking "By the way, what type of pajamas do you wear?"

James had forgotten how much being thumped by Lily hurt.

"So Remus is only going out with Felicity in spite of you two? I thought it might have been something like that but still, poor Felicity," Lily said after James had stopped rubbing his arm.

"I think she's quite enjoying it actually," James said smartly. Lily just looked at him with a blank expression on her face.

"Well of course she's enjoying now! She's getting what she's wanted for couple of years and the second Remus breaks it off she'll be devastated and heart broken and I'll be spending weeks trying to tell her that he wasn't worth it and how much of a scumbag Remus was and then she'll tell everyone and for a while Remus isn't going to have a social life coz all the girls won't be going near him coz Felicity said not too and it won't be until Felicity is going out with someone else that she'll forget about him and girls will find it safe to come out and be around him,"

James had a look of shock on his face.

"You memorized all that in six weeks? Wow"

"That, and loads more," Lily said sadly as they continued to walk to her classroom.

"I'm sorry," James said suddenly after they had sunk yet again into silence.

"For what?" Lily asked, turning her head to face him.

"For making you do this. I know it must have been pretty hard when we, well, mainly Sirius sprung it on you," James said, and what Lily could tell was real sincerity.

"Yeah well, I said I'd do it and I am," Lily told him stiffly as they reached her classroom.

"Lily, just remember that we actually still want to be your friends. And, be careful, don't become something you don't want to be," James said before walking off down the same corridor they had just come down while Lily watched him, feeling very confused.

-:-

"Oh my god, was the James Potter who walked you to class?" Felicity gushed as she sat down in her usual spot next to Lily.

"Yeah, it was," Lily said, wondering how Felicity always found out about stuff that she was never around for.

"That's so sweet! I bet he likes you, in fact, it's so obvious that he does," she said shaking her head "It's not that hard to figure it out,"

Lily stared at her with a blank expression "Explain"

"Staring at you, offering to walk you to class, both typical signs that a boy is interested," she said knowledgably as they took their seats towards the back of the classroom.

"Interested in what?"

"You, silly, what did you think, your pajamas?"

By now Lily had learnt to conceal her laughter quite well, however she didn't have a chance to reply until Double Runes came to a close.

"So what do you think I should do?" Lily asked her as they left their classroom and made their way to the Charms corridor.

"Well we'll need to get one issue out of the way first. Do you like James Potter?" Felicity asked her, stopping in the middle of the corridor. Lily found herself speechless. She hadn't been expecting this question though it was probably the most obvious question under the circumstances. She thought that Felicity would have told her to flirt with him like crazy to get his attention and become his girlfriend, regardless of the fact whether she actually liked him or not. She must have had a confused expression on her face as she thought this as Felicity groaned.

"This is going to take a while," she said, grabbing Lily's wrist and dragging her off to the out of order bathroom on the third floor.

"But what about charms?" Lily complained when Felicity finally let her wrist go in order to open the door.

"What about it? Your love life is so much more interesting,"

She pushed the door open and motioned for Lily to enter, who grudgingly did so. Felicity followed her in, locking the door behind them so as not to be disturbed. Lily walked into the aisle of cubicles and sat down and lent against the wall in between the cubicles. Felicity sat down right in front of her and crossed her legs and lent in towards Lily, her head resting in her hands.

"So," Felicity stared at Lily, who was beginning to feel very nervous.

"So?" Lily asked questionably, feeling a twiddle bit nervous.

"So," Felicity stated again, crossing her arms "What do you see when you look at James?"

"A fifteen year old guy with black hair and brown eyes?" Lily guessed, not knowing what her answer should be.

"How do you feel when you see him?" Felicity interrogated her.

"I dunno, happy?" Lily said, wondering where the hell Felicity was leading her.

"Lily, that's hardly a justified answer. Open up! I'm one of your best friends! You can tell me. Like when I see Remus I – " Lily conveniently decided to tune out at this point, not willingly want to listen to the intimate details of her relationship with Remus. She tuned back in when she noticed that Felicity's mouth had stopped moving.

"Dig deep," Felicity prompted "How do you feel about James?"

"Well, he's really nice and is easy to talk to. I always have a good time hanging out with him and he's not really that bad looking," Lily said, trying to list off some things about James that would hopefully pass as 'in depth' enough for Felicity. It apparently was as Felicity let out a shriek.

"I knew it! I knew you had a thing for James!" she exclaimed and Lily watched her whilst she did the 'Happy Finger Dance'.

The rest of what would have been charms was spent by Felicity listing off ways to attract guys to let them know you're interested but not doing it so obviously that its like slapping them in the face. When the bell rung to signal end off class, Lily all but propelled herself out of the bathroom in an attempt to flee from Felicity's clutches. They headed off down to lunch and today mustn't have been Lily's day because Felicity spotted

"Look there he is!" she practically yelped in Lily's ear.

"Yes Felicity, there goes your boyfriend with his friend James," Lily said sarcastically, sticking her finger in her ear to try to bring back the hearing that Felicity had seemed to have scared off.

"No silly! There's James!"

"Really?" Lily said again, sarcastically though this time earning a puzzled look from Felicity.

"I mean, O M G!" Lily squealed doing a little skip, hoping that the added entertainment for the passes by would be enough to distract Felicity from her sarcastic statement and knowing Felicity's short attention span she didn't have to worry.

"I know, right! You should so totally begin putting the plan into action," Felicity said excitingly.

"What, now?" Lily asked, now panic stricken. They were in a crowded corridor where students were heading down to lunch and she wasn't really willing to totally embarrass herself pretending to flirt with James.

"Of course now! Why not? You're here and he's there," Felicity stated, pointing to each of them in turn.

"Yeah, but he's with other people," Lily stuttered, praying that only Remus was still with him and Sirius hadn't met up with them on the way down.

"Who cares silly. You just do the hair and ankle thing and excuse him. Now go!" she commanded, pushing Lily forward into the stampede of students. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for Lily, Remus and James had stopped at the top of the marble stair case and were staring over the balcony at the bustling students below. She took a deep breath and walked up to James and tapped him on the shoulder.

James turned around to find himself standing in front of Lily who was twirling her hair around her finger.

"Lily?" He asked her puzzled.

"James, can I talk to you for a minute?" Lily asked and, without waiting for a response dragged him over to the other side of the corridor and made sure James had his back to Felicity.

"What's up Lily?" James asked her unsteadily, watching her continue to twirl her hair.

"I just wanted to ask you something," Lily said, beginning to flutter her eyelids.

"Are you okay? Your eyelids are going psycho, are you having a seizure?!" James asked her, panicky. Lily resisted the urge to punch him, only because Felicity was watching.

"No you idiot," Lily said through gritting teeth "These are my attemptions at flirting,"

And that was when James Potter made the great mistake of laughing.

Lily took a step forward and, in a flirtatious way, walked her fingers up his tie as if in an effort to straighten it. Then pulled.

"Stop laughing now or I will personally hang you with this tie,"

Of course, he stopped. Nobody crossed Lily when she was angry. She got up on her tiptoes and genuinely straightened his tie before sinking down.

"Listening now?" Lily asked him sweetly, going back to twirling her hair. James nodded.

"Well, because you walked me to class, Felicity got an idea in her head that you liked me then began interrogating me about whether I liked you and now she ordered me to come over and start flirting with you," Lily told him, trying to make her explanation look as flirty as she could for Felicity's benefit.

"Which would of course explain the hair twirling," James added knowledgably.

"Yea... so I thought I would let you know I will be randomly coming up to you and twirling my hair for a while now," Lily told him, her finger beginning to cramp.

"No," James said

"What?!" Lily said sharply, nearly dropping her forced smile.

"Think about it Lily. If you continue to come up to me and to that hair twirly thing, I dunno how long I can go before I burst out laughing and if Sirius was ever around, well, you'd probably be disowned by the girl group,"

"So what do you suggest? Tell Felicity I got rejected flat out? Or that you found my attempts laughable?" Lily demanded, trying to keep her voice at normal pitch.

"No, I-" Lily looked at him expectantly.

"Lily, will you go out with me?"

Lily felt her jaw drop.

"I mean not for real, but it would probably be easier for the both of us if we made it 'official'. Besides, when we have dates we can hang out like old times. What do you say?" James gave Lily a cheeky smile. Lily stared at him in surprise.

"That sounds, I dunno, great?" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around James' neck.

"Well, if I knew this would have been your reaction, I would've asked you out sooner," James smirked

"Your lucky Felicity's here right now, otherwise I'll punch you right now. However I might just make up for it when we go on our 'dates'," Lily whispered, wearing an identical smirk, making James release his arms from around her waste.

"So when's our first date?" Lily asked James, going back to the hair twirling.

"I thought we established that the hair twirling would cease now that I asked you out?" James complained who Lily chose to ignore.

"How bout tonight? It is Halloween after all. OMG, we can totally dress up!" James exclaimed, jumping happily up and down. Lily stared at him confused.

"James, I thought I was the one who was supposed to be the girl,"

James gave her a filthy look.

"I'm going to surrender myself over to Felicity because I'm hungry and it would be cruel to leave her in suspense for too long," Lily groaned, looking over in her general direction.

"Well until tonight my beautiful girlfriend," James charmed, bowing to Lily.

"And to you my fat sir," Lily said gracefully, curtsying and leaving James standing there before he could retort to her compliment.

Lily crossed the corridor which was less busy now that most of the students were at lunch and made her way to where she had left Felicity, however when she arrived Felicity was no where to be seen. Feeling neglected, Lily made her way back to the marble staircase and descended, dodging James' waiting arms and slid into the Great Hall. Felicity wasn't here either but Claudia and Patience where and Lily took her seat on Claudia's left hand side. She helped herself to a salad wrap from the pyramid in the middle of the table and tuned into Claudia and Patience's conversation.

"He's probably only going out with her to get back at you," Patience was saying to Claudia, her own wrap lying forgotten on her plate.

"I thought so too. I mean, why else would he have even gone out with her? I mean, he already went out with me and we all know I'm the prettiest so I don't know why on earth he would have dropped his standards..." Claudia trailed off, staring off into the Entrance Hall.

"Anyway, I heard that he was planning on breaking it off with her," Patience said loudly as if Claudia had gone suddenly deaf.

"Yeah?" Claudia said without taking her eyes off the door.

"Yeah, something about he came to his senses about dating her and realized that she could never live up to the standards of the relationship you too had together,"

This was too much for Lily. She couldn't help but snort into her class of juice after hearing what Patience had said. The whole concept of Remus seeing 'the light' was just laughable.

"What?" Patience snapped and Lily shook her head and muttered "Nothing"

Sick of hearing Patience going on about how Claudia and Remus were perfect together regardless of Felicity, once finishing her wrap Lily fled from the hall. Her last too lessons were uneventful apart from Felicity trying to get details of what went down between James and Lily every time one of their professors took breath and Claudia and Patience obviously ignoring Felicity.

Once their last lesson of the day, Potions, had finished (20 points to Lily for the only one able to perfectly create the Draught of Peace) Claudia and Patience rushed off in order to not arrive at the Great Hall at the same time whilst Lily and Felicity followed behind them at a leisurely pace. By the time Felicity and Lily arrived and found seats, Patience and Claudia where half way through their roast chicken and as soon as they finished they both speed off to where Lily could only assume was the common room.

Felicity and Lily hung out in the Great Hall a while after they had finished, giving them time to plant the pipe bomb they were so egger to place before heading up to start doing the homework. When they pushed open the portrait hole, Lily was the one who spied them first. Remus and Felicity were sitting side by side on the sofa facing the fire and as soon as Claudia noticed it was them that entered, she grabbed Remus's face in her hands and drew it towards hers. Lily watched in horror before turning to face Felicity who's face looked like it had just shattered into a million pieces. Lily watched as Felicity ran up the staircase and into their room, slamming the door behind her. Only one person in the common room seemed happy about that, well, maybe too. Sirius leapt off his seat and began chanting

"10 galleons to me! 10 galleons to me!"

_**Authors Note:Heya guys! I know! Too long grrr. But believe me its only my school work that is keeping us apart! Hope you enjoyed it and I'm disappointed in all off you who thought Remus would genuinely say yes to Felicity! Though you just gotta feel sorry for her sometimes ... Anyways thanks to all u guys that have pushed me over the 100 review mark! Claps for you all click click**_**anyhow reviews are always appreciated hint hint nudge nudge Any advice or complaint or idea for the story line are also welcome :)**

**Until next time ...**


	9. Hairy Situations

_**IMPORTANT NOTICE!!**_　Good, do I have your attention? Thank you lol. I have already posted this chapter so if you get that alert thing you'll be wondering why. Its because when I came back to reread my work to start the next chapter, I noticed the ending was not how I finished it, it was only HALF the chapter! So, I have reposted the WHOLE CHAPTER! Enjoy and review!

_Disclaimer:Blah Blah Don't own it, shhishkabob!_

Chapter 9:Hairy Situations Revised!.

The temperature in the room began to dangerously rise. When Remus finally came to terms of what was happening, he pushed Claudia off him, looking confused and Claudia looking pleased with herself, staring at something over Remus shoulder. He turned in time to see a blur disappear up the girl's staircase.

It was then Lily realized she was standing by herself whilst the people in the common room continued to move around her. Remus had leapt of the couch and had ran to the girl's staircase before stopping as he realized he couldn't get up there and retorted to sitting on the bottom step, his head in his hands.

Claudia, still smirking walked gracefully over to him and sat down next to him, placing one arm around him and brought herself closer to him. Remus looked up to find her with a 'What the Fuck?' look on his face, wondering what on earth had he deserved to have his ex draped all over him. He tried to shake her off but she clung on to him like a cat and continued to smile, ever so often to stroke his hair before she looked up the staircase.

Lily looked up too and recognized the pair of Gabbana slippers before they disappeared again and from the other side of the room she could swear she could hear her sob. After that, Lily realized she could move and in a few quick steps she had reached Remus and Claudia and for once, Lily was taller than both.

"WHY would you do that Claudia?" Lily cried as Claudia sat there stroking his hair. He looked up at the sound of Lily's voice which probably confused him more. She grabbed his wrist and with all the strength she could manage she pulled him out of Claudia's clutches.

"Go to bed!" Lily growled at him and he was happy to comply, he had seen the dangerous spark in her eye.

"What? You can't possibly have not known that the only reason that he was going with Felicity was because of a bet," Claudia sneered, standing up and overshadowing her. Curse these damn short genes!

"Yeah I knew, but you didn't see me passionately kissing Remus did you? Why on earth would you do that? Felicity's your friend!"

"Sure she is, but Remus was mine and she should have known better to take my stuff," she said simply. Lily could feel her face going red.

"Your stuff? YOUR stuff?" she screeched, scaring a couple of second years sitting near the stairs "Remus is a person, not your 'STUFF'! And even if he was going out with Felicity as a dare, they were still going out! And as her friend you knew about the dare you should have eased her through it or let her find out for herself, rather than take matters into your own hands and snog him on the couch in the middle of the common room!" Lily shrieked at her, trying to remember the last time she felt so angry.

"Pfft like I care about her feelings. She's pretty, not as pretty as me but still pretty and has good taste and so I allow her to hang out with me. But when she starts taking things that don't belong to her, she goes down. I don't give a damn about her feelings. She asked him out, he said yes which I forgive him for because that's when the dare came into play and now because I helped him get out of it, he's free to be happy with me," she said plainly, inspecting her fingernails.

"Have you ever considered that he might NOT want to go out with you?" Lily asked her through her gritted teeth.

"Of course he wants to be with me. I could have any guy I want and I want him. I made a mistake dumping him and leaving him for the rest of Hogwarts so I'm taking him back. Besides, if he didn't want me, why did he kiss me back?" and without further a due, she pushed past Lily and headed out of the portrait hole but first stopping to check her appearance in the mirror that hung on the wall. Lily stomped her foot in frustration then stood frozen. She couldn't believe she actually stomped her foot…

After the shock had worn off, she bolted over to the boys staircase, taking the stairs two at a time till she reached the door to the room occupied by the Marauders and rasped three times loudly on the door.

"Don't come in!" Sirius sung out in a sing song voice "We're naked!" Rolling her eyes, Lily kicked the door open and walked in.

"James! Something's hap- OH GOD! AHHH" Lily yelled as she tripped over someone's toy quaffle and landed on the floor, refusing to get up and covering her eyes with her arms.

"I warned you," Sirius said simply as he put his pants on. It was then that James decided to make his appearance from the bathroom before stopping dead once entering the room, looking between Lily hiding her face on the floor and Sirius having difficulty putting his pants on. He couldn't help himself, he burst out laughing.

"Shut up! Shut Up! SHUT UP!" Lily cried into the floor, "Sirius, bloody hell, hurry up!"

"Well excuse me Miss Evans, it's a very difficult task. First of all you need to make sure that the item of clothing you pulled out is a pair of pants, not in fact, a sweater. Then you have the hard task of putting your legs of through the right holes so as you don't end up putting your pants on back to front of and wondering why everyone is pointing at you with a different face than they usually do-" he gave James a dirty look "Then when you have to pull them up you're wondering if these are in fact the pants that fit you or if they were the one's your Aunty Nikki gave you last year that make your bum look big and then, the difficult task of pulling the zipper up so it doesn't get caught on-"

"ARRGGH not LISTENING LA LA LA LA LA" Lily sung until she snuck a glance at James who gave the okay sign for her to look up. She grabbed hold of the bed next to her and stood up. She turned to face James.

"Good, you're here. I need you, its time for our first date," Lily said and grabbed James's wrist and led him out the door, ignoring Sirius's bewilded expression. Once escaping through the portrait hole, Lily dropped James's wrist and he massaged it tenderly.

"I need to talk to you somewhere privately," Lily told him and he raised his eyebrows.

"How bout the kitchens? I'm hungry," Lily rolled her eyes

"Didn't you just have dinner?" James gave her a blank stare

"So?" Lily sighed and she walked briskly down to the basement and once they were seated at the mirror image of the Gryffindor table and James was given enough food to satisfy his hunger, Lily began.

"You know the dare between you and Remus…." She started off with and James looked up from his plate.

"Wif won?" he asked through his food.

"The one about Felicity," Lily reminded him and he nodded his head.

"Oh bat won," Lily, confused for a minute wondering who the bat was and why she would care that he won, then continued.

"Well Claudia seemed to get word of it and when we came back from dinner, she and Remus were sitting on the couch and as soon as she saw us, she pulled him close to her and started snogging him, breaking away and watching Felicity crying as she ran up the girls stair case,"

"Oh Bat Bitts!"

…

"That Bitch?"

"Twat I Fed!"

"Anyway I wanted to ask you something….."

James stared at her with wide eyes "You asked!"

"You talked with your mouth empty!"

"Touché" James said, eyes back down on his food.

"Does Remus still LIKE Claudia?" James stopped eating

"Bo Bay!"

"Well if that's the case, since you're my 'boyfriend', I was wondering if you would help me make Claudia's life hell? As pay back from Felicity?"

"Well it depends… The revenge you talk about. Would that be the whole girl backstabbing her friends or would that be the Marauder way?"

"How about a mixture of both?" Lily asked slyly and James nodded.

"And since I've watched many teenage movies and we're in the kitchen, I have the perfect first one,"

-:-

The next morning was beautiful. The sun rose from behind the mountains as usual, the colours of orange and pink and purple entwining and shadowing the country in those colours. It was all quite and peaceful, the students all continuing to live in their dreams and the birds were waking up and joining in singing their beautiful song with the wood elves from the forest before the screaming of Claudia woke up the whole of the northern hemisphere.

Even due to the early hour, Lily couldn't help but sniggering. Several girls had already pounded on the door, demanding who was killed and if the killer was still in their room and Patience had given herself the job of announcing to everyone that all was fine. She was the only one that Claudia had let inside the hangings of the bed to show what was wrong however Lily had a pretty good picture of what she looked like.

Last night James had helped her carry the ingredients back to the common room before saying goodnight and demanding a photo of her handy work. And so, Lily had set to work. She had covered Claudia's hair entirely in honey before covering it all in whipped cream, making it look like she was wearing a wig. Lily was even artistic enough to give her caramel and chocolate topping highlights. She had also cut up eye holes in her sleeping mask and put superglue on her eyebrows so that the mask stuck and she drew a very thick monobrow on the mask as well. And, as promised, she had taken a photo of her handy work.

"God damn it Claudia, its fricken 5am. I don't think anyone at Hogwarts will be happy you all woke them up coz you got a pimple!" Jessica complained and drew her curtain far enough across to hide her view of Claudia's bed and threw her pillow over her head as if expecting a reprise.

Lily snickered again and grabbed her dressing gown, putting it on and pushed past Patience at the door and went down to the common room. She headed up the boys staircase, this time one at a time and knocked on the door. Not getting any answer, she pushed the door open, squinting her eyes so they were closer to being able to snap shut. This was not needed however, as all the boys were in their beds, looking identical with their pillows over their heads. Lily bounded over to James's bed and jumped onto his back as he let out a loud groan.

"God Lily, can't you have control over any of your friends? Can't you get Claudia to stop screaming for five minutes?" James asked her, trying to turn over but with Lily sitting on top of him it was a difficult task.

"She's not screaming at the moment James," Lily told him, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh my bad, maybe its just her screaming echoing all through my eardrums," James moaned, finally managing to turn over, face up and Lily skillfully kept her balance.

"Well, do you want to see WHY you were all woken this morning?" Lily asked him, giving him an evil grin as he took the pillow away from his face. He's face broke into a huge grin

.

"Gimme!" Lily handed over the photo and James was taken over by a fit of laughs.

"God mate, we just got screamed to death by Claudia, please don't kill us in another way," Sirius complained and James chucked his pillow at him.

"You wanna see why?" James asked and Sirius sprung over, landing on the other side of the bed. He snatched it from James's hands and gave a bark like laugh.

"That's great mate! How did you do it?" Sirius asked James, patting him on the head as he couldn't reach his back.

"I didn't, it was Lily," Sirius gave Lily a stare.

"How very unLADYlike," Sirius told her, raising his eyebrows.

"No Sirius, she found a loophole. They did stuff like this in teenage movies and so she just copied," James reasoned with Sirius.

"Hmmph," Sirius said, stomping off to the bathroom.

"Why didn't you let me answer for myself?" Lily demanded when he was out of ear shot.

"Coz he would believe me over you anyway," James said sensibly. Lily hit him. James rubbed his arm and muttered 'Love you too,"

-:-

Claudia did not arrive for breakfast, nor did she reappear in any of her classes. By now, everyone in the castle had found out that the scream that woke everyone up was Claudia's and Lily, Felicity and Patience were subjected to much questioning from various curious students.

This was hardest on Felicity, her eyes watered over whenever someone mentioned Claudia's name around her which was quite frequent due to the recent cause of events and Lily took it upon herself to take every short cut she had discovered to get Felicity to arrive to class in one peace. This was fine by Patience, she was ecstatic that she had achieved so much attention, whether or not it was because of Claudia.

Patience had also made it her job to deliver messages from Claudia to her teachers to explain her absences. Tiny Professor Flitwick had nodded his head understandably when Patience explained that Claudia was feeling a little under the weather and couldn't bring herself to get up and he wished her a steady recovery. Professor Slughorn just nodded his head when Patience told him as he past her cauldron to inspect and moved right past her to inspect Lily's work. It was only Professor McGonagall who, during their Transfiguration lesson that afternoon asked some questions.

"I trust that you escorted Miss Roderick down to the Hospital Wing this morning then Miss Oxley?" McGonagall said in a voice that wouldn't be out of place in an interrogation.

"Uh, well no. Her symptoms are very…unusual. She was worried that she might be, er, contagious?"

"Well what are they Miss. Oxley? I might not be a healer but I know the basic symptoms for colds and infections she could have caught at this school," McGonagall said, tapping her food and staring at Patience. By now, everyone had given up trying to vanish their assortment of animals and had turned their attention to Patience, some looking forward to see her get grilled by McGonagall, others listening intently to find out if Patience slipped and told what was really wrong with Claudia

"Well, er-" Patience began, looking around for help but unfortunately for her, Lily and Felicity were concentrating very hard on their vanishing spells. McGonagall continued to stare at her with a very impatient look on her face.

"Her hair has become, er, sticky," McGonagall raised her eyebrow "And it turned white with light and dark brown strips which are also sticky and, uh, there have been the grown of extra facial hair," she said the last part quietly, as although it wasn't the exact truth, if Claudia found out that this is what Patience had explained her absence about she would be out like (snap) that.

"Well, the symptoms you are suggesting sound like sphinculititus however it is very uncommon. However, I'm no expert on this particular virus so you should take her down to Miss Pomfrey immediately. Miss Oxley, would you be so kind as to return to Gryffindor tower and help Miss. Roderick down?" Patience nodded and rose from her seat and headed to the door.

"Professor, would it be alright if I accompany Patience to Gryffindor to help with Claudia? The thing is, this morning when I saw Claudia, she looked in no condition to walk and I just thought that two people would be better than one," Lily burst, the attention of the class immediately turned onto her and Felicity looked like she was able to burst into tears again. Professor McGonagall nodded.

"Very well Miss Evans, you may assist Miss Oxley. Be quick and return back to my class as soon as possible to return to your work on the vanishing charm. Bare in mind that if it is not of a statisfactory standard, you will be given extra homework," she said. Patience gulped and Lily nodded.

"Of course Professor," Lily said, standing up and shoving a folded piece of parchment into Felicity's hand and joined Patience at the door. Once out of ear shot of McGonagall, Patience turned to her.

"Why did YOU volunteer to come? I know you and Claudia had a fight last night about her kissing Remus, which I would have done if I were in her position," she said, looking at Lily and expecting the answer to become written on the front of her robes.

"Because I was sorry about what I said yesterday, after all," Lily sighed "Remus DOES belong to her, its only right that I go up and apologize," Patience, satisfied with this answer, continued walking up to Gryffindor tower in silence. Once reaching the door to their room, Patience knocked on the door three times.

"Who's there?" came a high pitched squeak from the room beyond.

"It's me, Patience," Patience simpered, slowly pushing the door open. "Oh, and Lily," she added as an after thought.

"Lily?" the high pitched voice asked in surprise, "What is SHE doing here?" Lily pushed through the door and entered the room before Patience, going straight over to Claudia's bed but as an act of respect she sat down on the chair beside the bed.

"I'm really sorry about what I said yesterday, it's just I didn't know that Remus was technically yours. I thought you had grown tired to him and threw him back into the ocean, I didn't know you were just taking a 'break'," Lily simpered, wondering how disgusting she sounded. Claudia sighed.

"It's okay Lily, I forgive you. After all, you are new. I shouldn't have expected you to have known all the rules yet so it's quite understandable. Anyway, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in McGonagall's class?" Claudia asked, her voice still a tad too high.

"You see Claudia, that's the reason we're here…" Patience said softly "McGonagall has sent us up here to transfer you to the hospital wing,"

"NO!" Claudia squealed and Lily assumed she had thrown her covers over her head. Her theory was proved correct when her muffled voice added "There is no way I'm walking through the corridors of Hogwarts looking like THIS!" she screeched.

"Don't worry Claudia, everyone's in class. Nobody will be able to see you, it's okay," Lily said kindly, trying to keep her grin in.

"Are you sure? Nobody will see me?" her muffled voice squeaked.

"Nobody will see you," Patience agreed, nodding her head even though nobody but Lily could see her.

"I'm going to pull the curtain back now," Lily said slowly and Claudia made a small noise as Lily slowly opened the curtain, revealing a lump under the covers. Lily then gently took hold of the top of the covers and pulled it off to reveal Claudia, looking a little worse for wear. The whipped cream had mostly come of her hair but it had come onto her sheets and pillows. Her hair still looked like it was smeared in honey and was all knotted which Lily knew couldn't result well. It also seemed that the caramel and chocolate topping must have seeped through the cream and onto the honey, staining it and looking as though her hair was caramel and chocolate swirl. The mask was still there, just as Lily expected it would be. The monobrow drawing had become smudged which just made it look hairier. Patience reach over and slowly put her arm out to touch Claudia on the shoulder. Lily was ready for this, she had her wand in her hand, pointed at Claudia from behind her back and as Patience's hand was about to reach her shoulder, Lily muttered a few quick, well chosen words. As soon as Patience's hand had made contact, thick, brown hair grew fast from the region that had been touched by her skin. Claudia shrieked, almost causing an earthquake.

"What did you DO?" she screamed at Patience, moving away from here.

"Nothing I swear Claudia!" Patience looked as shocked at Claudia, staring at her hand. "Maybe whoever did this to you put a spell on you as well!"

This theory didn't seem to make Claudia calmer, indeed, it seemed to have the opposite effect. Before Lily knew it, Claudia was hyperventilating. She began doing it so fast that she started to choke and she lent forward, trying to breath.

"Breathe, Claudia breathe!" Patience panicked, thumping Claudia on the back to help clear her airwaves. Lily was ready again, as soon as Patience's hand touched her back, hair instantly began growing. Patience looked horrified but Claudia was too busy choking to notice. Patience grabbed her arm to pull her into the up right seating position, hair growing there too as soon as she let go. In a last hope of desperation to get her to stop, Patience slapped her. Claudia stopped, then saw the hair growing over her face where she was slapped and started screeching again.

"Claudia, screaming is not going to make it stop," Lily said calmly and they both looked at her as if she was insane.

"Now, we need to get you down to the hospital wing, the question is how," Lily told them, "Claudia, would you allow me to put a hand on you to see if you sprout hair to see if its just all humans or Patience," Patience looked outraged that Lily could refer to her as a disease or being contaminated and stared back at her with a sulky expression but Claudia just screwed up her eyes.

"Just do it," she said to Lily, sticking out her arm in Lily's direction. Lily slowly put her hand on Claudia's elbow, and just as Lily knew it would, nothing happened. Claudia opened one eye a fraction and stared at her arm, before opening them both fully, taking her arm from Lily and ordering

"Patience, go stand over there," she pointed over to the far side of the room

"But, but!" Patience started but Claudia silenced her. Nobody spoke back to the queen bee. Claudia allowed Lily to help her to her feet and while Claudia put her slippers on, Lily fetched her a pair of robes.

"What are they for?" Claudia asked her, raising an eyebrow.

"If you put it on, nobody will be able to see the hair on your body and if you put the hood up, it will cover your hair and hid your face," Lily told her simply and threw the robes to her. She put them on gladly, pulling the hood up and hiding her face instantly.

"What am I supposed to do?" Patience asked as Lily had begun leading Claudia to the door.

"Walk at some distance ahead of us to make sure nobody sees me," Claudia ordered, and even though Patience wasn't happy with Claudia right now, she did what she was told. The walk to the hospital wing was uneventful and Lily excused herself from Madam Pomfrey's waiting gaze to find out the truth by leaving to get back to Transfiguration, leaving Patience to answer all the necessary questions.

Lily slipped inside the door to the classroom at five minutes to the bell, taking her seat next to Felicity. Felicity shot Lily an angry glance as she sat down but Lily knew she had read her note as she hadn't moved away from her. When class ended, on Patience was given extra homework as her caterpillar was still fully intact. Lily asked Felicity to wait outside the door as she sprinted off to catch Jessica. Felicity had only time to inspect her fingernails on one hand by the time Lily came back.

All through dinner, Lily kept jumping and looking excited but Felicity had no clue what was going on. Maybe she would explain after dinner, that's what Lily had wrote in the note she had past her but why should she believe Lily. As soon she had put her last mouthful in her mouth, she had hardly a chance to swallow when Lily grabbed her arm and pulled her from the table.

"Where are taking me?" Felicity grumbled, though she didn't force herself out of Lily's grip.

"The library," Lily said simply without stopping.

"Why?" Felicity asked her in surprise "Nobody ever goes to the library,"

"Exactly," Lily said, which left Felicity more confused than ever. Lily dropped her hold on Felicity when she reached the door to push it open, then lead Felicity inside. Lily wove through stacks and stacks of books until she finally reached a table, towards the back of the library.

"Sit," Lily told her, sitting down at her own chair opposite.

"Are you going to tell me now what's happening?" Felicity asked her sulkily.

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind either," said Jessica, coming into view. She grumpily sat down on the chair next to Felicity, though pushing it as far away from her as she could with Felicity being insulted.

"I'll tell you when the last member of the party gets here," Lily told them calmly, turning to scan the titles of the books around her.

"Well, the last member's here so now we can par-tay," James said, coming into view and plonking on the chair next to Lily.

"So these are the faithful recruitments?" James asked Lily and she nodded "Good turn out, good turn out. Surprised you got Felicity here though," he added as an after thought.

"Not that I had a choice, she dragged me here instead of letting me eat dinner," Felicity grumbled, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Its not like you eat anything anyway," Jessica shot at her, and Felicity stuck out her tongue.

"Ladies, ladies, don't we all want to know what we're here for?" James asked them.

"You already know what you're here for," Felicity pointed out and Jessica rolled her eyes.

"My dear lady, it tis an expression," James said kindly and Felicity blushed.

"Okay, the reason you're all here is because we all share something in common," Lily started before Jessica cut her off.

"Finally coming out of the closet ay James," she smirked and he shook his head "No Jessica, that would be Peter,"

"True," she said before she caught Lily's eye and became somber.

"No, we all do not Claudia," Lily said, waiting for there response.

"Can't deny that,"

"That's true,"

"I like puppies,".

After a sharp look in James's direction, Lily again continued.

"I think that with James and I coming up with plans and with you two to help me we can make her life hell,"

"What do you mean 'James and I'? I am the world renown prankster," James asked her raising his eyebrow.

"In your dreams sweetie," Lily told him, patting his arm softly before turning back to the other two.

"In an act to make her less suspicious, I had the idea that would try to become Claudia's new best friend. I know she would rather me any day than Patience, I made sure of that and it would be very suspicious if Jessica suddenly wanted to be her friend and since she has just taken over Remus territory Felicity wouldn't work either. James and I" she emphasized the last three words "Have come up with a plan and his is what I reckon we should do first……"

_**A/N: Dun Dun Dun!! **__**I present to you, the WHOLE chapter! You like? If yes, click the button down to the left and select review! If no, still click the button down to your left and select review! Thanks to all the people who have already reviewed the half chapter, if it weren't for your votes I wouldn't be rereading it in order to write another chapter!**_

_**Notice:I'm thinking of writing a different HP fanfic (don't fret if I still get reviews for this one I shall continue) and I have a synopsis about it on my profile. Please read it and in your review say whether I should write it or not. Not in instant messages because I never get them, and I never get story alerts or anything **__****__** I don't know why……… anyways make my day, PLEASE REVIEW!**_

_**Moonlight Honeysuckle xo**_


	10. The Tears, Fears, Truth and Change

Disclaimer: I wish I did but I don't and now I'm crush because the HP themepark is not a themepark, it is a 'land' in a bigger park and grrrr. Anyway HBP trailer comes out on the 16th, hope its good, the Twilight teaser was weird and I'm rambling but anyways, here is the chapter that only took a mere month to be posted! I halved my time! :)

Chapter 10:The Tears, The Fears, The Truth and The Change

It was the weekend before Christmas and things were heating up in the fifth year girl's dormitory. Belongings lay strewn over the timber floors and an unusual smell was issuing from the fireplace in the middle of the room. Jessica was the only one not dashing around frantically and had decided to sit on an unoccupied bed and just sit and wait for the series of events to unfold.

"Patience!" Claudia was screaming from the umpteenth time that morning at the only bed with the curtains around it drawn and was greeted with the same response she had been greeted with all morning.

"I'm telling you Claudia, I SWEAR I didn't take it!" Patience's replied, her words becoming more muffled as in a desperate attempt to keep her hearing, she drew her hangings even closer. In two long strides, Claudia had made it over to Patience's bed and pulled the hangings back, however with a little too much enthusiasm as the rings broke and the curtains fell to the floor.

"I will only ask you one more time Patience, where did you put my bottle of Dior perfume?" she snarled through closed teeth and with a look most unattractive on her face.

"Claudia, I'm telling you I didn't take it! You know I love that perfume!" Patience screamed back and grabbed her pillow and covered her face with it.

"That is why you are the most likely person to have taken it! Lily prefers my Armani than my Dior, Felicity has her own bottle and Jessica just- well, its obvious that she wouldn't take it. Besides, you're always begging to use some, why wouldn't you take it?"

Claudia was becoming rather impatient and ignoring Patience's sobs of innocents, she took out her want and pointed it at the white pillow which consumed Patience's face. Instantly Patience's sobs changed from ones proclaiming innocence to terror as her pillow changed into a rather large spider which was gripping onto to Patience's face with all eight legs.

Claudia joined in with Jessica's laughter as Patience sought out her wand before removing the large spider and banishing it into a state of being. She looked slowly up to see Claudia with a look of fear in her eyes.

"I would never take anything that's yours," Patience said softly, unable to break contact. Claudia nodded.

"That's right, and next time if you so much as bump anything of mine, I'll make sure that next time I'll apply a permanent sticking charm to that spider," she snarled and with one last look of the dormitory strewn with Patience's belongs, she left.

-:-

She had been running so fast she nearly fell face first into the bowl of fruit. Once steadying herself, she reached out her index finger to tickle the pear and once the door handle appeared, she flung it over and burst into the room and ran straight over to the red head and the boy with messy hair that were sitting at the table furthest from the door.

"Well?" James demanded as she fell onto the seat next to Lily, both sets of eyes staring at her.

"Oh it was a right show down," Jessica said in between trying to get her breathing back to normal.

"Come on, spill the details!" Lily said, nudging her friend and James nodded eagerly.

"You left just as she began packing right?" Jess asked and Lily nodded "Well, it was soon after that. She started with her clothes first, every so often giving me strange looks when she caught me staring but most of the time she was pushing Patience away coz she kept trying to 'help'. Anyway, she soon got fed up with that and went to the bathroom to retrieve her belongings there, slamming the door in Patience's face when she tried to follow Claudia in there. So Patience went over the bed and sat with her arms folded, sulking for a while, until Claudia came bursting out the door demanding to know where her Dior perfume was –" Lily and James shared smirks "and instantly began interrogating Patience. Now of course the little wannabe didn't like that one bit and kept pleading her innocence…which I guess she was, anyway, she kept trying to pass the buck off onto you or Felicity. Anyhow it didn't work, thank goodness Felicity and Claudia like the same things, well in most cases…" she added hastily as everyone's thoughts slipped to Remus "and that you decided to start that whole Dior verses Armani dispute last week for good measure, that's what got you off the hook, not that I have any idea what the difference is anyway and so, in the end, Patience ended up with a giant spider on her face and Claudia storming from the room," Jessica finished and again trying to get her breathing back to normal.

"Not bad, but I thought Claudia would be smarter than that," James said, shaking his head disappointed, "How bad did the smell get?"

"Oh you could well and truly smell it in the room before she left," Jessica told them before chugging half the glass of water a house elf had brought her "Hey, wasn't Felicity supposed to be here with you?"

"She was," Lily said "She went to the bathroom half an hour ago," Jessica raised her eyes and James shrugged.

"Hey, you're the girls, you've got more of a clue of what's going on in her mind at the moment that what I do,"

"And again with the sexist comments hey James?" Jessica said sweetly and James winked "You know it,"

"Well James, if you make any more of those comments James, you'll turn into Sirius," Lily tutted and James feinted a face of mock horror.

"Oh no! Not Sirius! Can't I be like Remus? At least he has an interesting love life,"

"An interesting love life? Is that all I am to anyone? Just someone mixed up in one of the Marauder's love lives?" Felicity said for the door way and from the state of her face it had been clear she had been clear that she had been crying. Their faces all dropped as they turned to find her there and she turned around and walked back out the kitchen.

"Shit," was all that was muttered before Lily got up and made her way over to the door and followed the corridor until she heard the sound of Felicity shedding tears inside a broom closet. Lily slowly opened the door and joined Felicity among the buckets and mops.

"Fe, you know that's not what James meant," Lily told her soothingly as she hiccupped.

"I know _hic_ that. But I just can't _hic_ feel angry when _hic_ people just talk about hic me like I'm _hic _weekly gossip," she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"You know it wasn't like that, you shouldn't let this affect you as much as you let it. Its been a month and a half…"

"_Hic_ I know! But I never hic realized how much _hic_ I liked him until _hic_ she took him," her breathing slowed down but she was overwhelmed by a new set of tears following this statement.

"But Fe, you know he doesn't really like Claudia…."

"Of course he _hic_ likes that bitch _hic_ it's the only _hic_ reason that someone would actually _hic_ go out 

with her!" she stammered through her tears.

"Yes but she isn't giving him a choice. Hon, she's not giving him a chance to second guess his feelings, she's all over him twenty four seven! That's why I needed you to stay here over Christmas instead of going shopping with your parents in Milan. James said that Remus would be staying here over Christmas and only leaving to floo to Claudia's belated Christmas party which is two nights before everyone comes back to Hogwarts and so we're going to use this time without Claudia to our advantage, but if Remus barely sees you over the holidays because your avoiding him or sees you flee from the room hiding tears whenever he enters one your in, your not going to get him back,"

Felicity sat silently, trying to control her tears and thinking over what Lily just explained while Lily got out a white handkerchief and passed it to Felicity who took it thankfully.

"But who says he'll like me? He's probably forgotten me by now and even if he starts liking me again or remembering me, one look at Claudia at her party and he'll forget me again. You've never seen Claudia at a party, and you've never seen one that she's thrown," she said in distress, blowing her nose, the noise reverberating off the stone walls inside the small cupboard.

"Fe, he's already proved that he's liked you, you went out for six weeks for goodness sake! You broke the one month barrier and everyone knows that after a month you can't be forgotten! Besides, why do you think I accepted Claudia's invitation to the party? Apart from the fact it would look real suspicious if I didn't, I'm going to keep an eye on Remus and I'll chain him to me if he's desperate to get back with Claudia," Lily joked and Felicity let out a small laugh.

"Come on, you need to clean yourself up," Lily told her, standing up and holding out her hands to Felicity, waiting for her to take hers before pulling her to her feet. Lily pushed the door wide and Felicity instantly walked off towards the nearest bathroom. Lily headed back to the kitchens where Jessica and James still were, continuing their bickering.

"I still reckon you're going to end up like Sirius," Jessica was saying and James was shaking his head vigorously.

"Nah uh! I won't, I won't, I won't!"

"Fine, a dog then! You do have the shaggy black hair after all," Jessica joked and Lily thought she say James freeze, but a second later it was gone.

"I'd rather be a dog! You get all the bitches," he said, winking at Jessica who laughed.

"Seems like you'll have to fight Remus for her then,"

"Touché" James said before seeing Lily over Jessica's shoulder and giving her a questioning look.

"I found her, she's gone to the bathroom to clean herself up. She might need a hand though," she said, looking pointedly at Jessica, who raised her eyes questioningly but nevertheless volunteered and left Lily and James together.

"What's the problem?" James asked her as she took the seat that Jessica had questioningly vacated.

"Was Remus just going out with Felicity because of the dare you guys had?" Lily asked him. James shrugged, "I guess so, why?"

"Well, did you know if Remus had any actual feeling for Felicity?" Lily asked again to a puzzled James who replied "I dunno, we usually know who each of us likes but if he liked Felicity I doubt he would have told us seeing to us, well especially Sirius, it was just a laugh. Why all the questions?"

"Well with all the plans of driving Patience away and planning to get Remus and Felicity together, I had kinda forgotten that the reason that he had been going out with her had just been a dare. I guess being around Felicity and her tears long enough I'd forgotten that he never really liked her in the first place…"

"Hey, we don't know that for certain. Like I said, he could quite possibly have liked Felicity, he didn't seem to cringe every time he kissed her and he would never have told us if he did. Sirius would pay him out until the turn of the century and he knew that I would tell Sirius which would also result with being paid out until the end of the century," James said, giving Lily an encouraging smile.

"Gah, why you guys are always on each other's case about stuff is beyond me," Lily groaned, placing her head in her hands "But I can't believe that this hadn't crossed my mind before,"

"Don't sweat it Lily, it will work out, even if we have to tweak nature's course to get it there," James said, standing up and holding his hand out to Lily "Shall we join the others?"

Lily took his hand "We shall,"

-:-

James and Lily walked back up to Gryffindor Tower holding hands, as to live up to the rumors that they were dating and James farewelled Lily at the bottom of the girl's staircase with a kiss on her hand as he left her to finish off the prank they had began earlier that day. When Lily pushed open the door to the room, the smell nearly overpowered her. She looked around at the occupaints of the room, Jessica sitting on her bed reading with a peg on her nose, Claudia standing at the bottom of her bed, finishing her packing and with what looked like a fish bowl over her head and Patience sitting on the bed with nothing as it seemed like Claudia had forbid it.

Jessica looked up when Lily entered the room and nodded her head in the direction of the bathroom, signifying that's where Felicity was at that present moment Apparently after their talk Felicity still couldn't bare to be in the same room as Claudia.

"What in the name of Merlin is that smell?" Lily exclaimed as she stepped through the threshold of the door. Jessica, as planned, ignored her. Patience, as usual, ignored her. Only Claudia acknowledged 

Lily's presence and question.

"I don't know, but it wasn't one of the things I did to get back at Patience for taking me Dior. I wouldn't have done anything that would make me suffer as well," Claudia paused to speak to Lily before continuing to fold her extremely lacy underwear neatly into her suitcase.

Lily pretended to sniff the air to find out where the source was although she knew all to well where it was coming for. She continued sniffing the surrounding air as Claudia continued packing, Patience rolled her eyes and Jessica watched her with fake amusement.

"It's coming from the fireplace," Lily said, to no one in particular though somehow all of them. Claudia paused when she finished with her underwear though then moved onto her bras, Patience rolled her eyes again and shut her curtains around her bed which she repaired earlier and Jessica looked up from the book she was 'reading' waiting for the explosion.

Lily opened the door which revealed the ashes of what use to be logs and stuck her hand inside the unlit oven. She new where it was, it was she who had placed it there earlier that day with Jessica as lookout but she fumbled around longer for affect before her hand closed around the clear, rectangular shaped bottle with what used to be yellow perfume but had turned purple when Lily had added a Strengthening Solution and let the liquid seep out of the bottle and through the ashes. She pulled the bottle out, careful to spill the rest of the solution out of the bottle to avoid suspicion, placed the lid back on and pulled it through the door.

Lily wiped off some of the soot that covered the glass so she could read quite clearly Diorella Christian Dior which was written in gold across the bumpy surface of the glass.

"Hey Claudia, wasn't the Dior perfume you own Diorella?" Lily asked in a casual tone and watched Claudia shrug "Yeah, what about it?" as Patience ripped the hangings back.

"Well I just found this at the back of the fire place," Lily said calmly, holding it up to Claudia as she turned around and Patience shrieked.

"See, I told you! Didn't I Claudia? I told you it was Evans! How else would she know where it was?" Patience was jumping up and down on her knees, her arm out in front of her at full length pointing to Lily.

"Because you idiot, you can smell that stench a mile away and Lily was the only one who bothered to find the source. Since I'm leaving tonight, I really couldn't less,"

"I still say it was Evans!"

"Of course you would if you did it!" Claudia snapped at her, before taking the bottle Lily held out to her and throwing it at Patience who caught it in surprise and fell backwards.

"Here, you obviously wanted it, here's the bottle as a souvenir. Too bad you didn't think to put the lid on properly," She sneered, flicking the locks down on her suit case and picking it up and walking towards the door, and began walking out but paused at the door frame.

"By the way, I'll be having my father send you a check for the perfume. Treat that as your official uninvited to my party," she said with an air of snobbiness before she left the room, slamming the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, the bathroom door opened and Felicity's small face peered out from behind it.

"Is it safe?" she asked the room timidly.

"If you mean is the wicked witch gone, yes," Jessica said, instantly turning back to her book. They had decided that it wouldn't be safe for them all to talk together in the dorm with Patience there since Lily had been made Claudia's new right hand woman, Felicity had been classified a social outcast by Claudia and Jessica was just a weirdo.



Sighing, Felicity entered the room and Patience leapt off the bed, shoving past Felicity and slammed the bathroom door behind her.

"Why's Claudia leaving tonight?" Jessica asked when they heard the loud gushing sound of running water coming from the bathroom.

"Scared of trains," Lily and Felicity said in unison as they sat down on their beds.

"So how's she getting home?" Jessica asked, her book laying forgotten on her bed.

"She said something about her dad's butler, or assistant or someone picking her up in Hogsmeade. Some teacher was asked to escort her down there though," Lily told Jessica as Felicity and Lily began getting changed into their pajamas. Lily turned off the lights as they slipped under the covers and into their warm beds.

"Well, our latest feat went rather well," Lily said into the darkness as the sound of the hairdryer stopped the sleep from consuming them.

"I'll say, I actually found it rather enjoyable," Jessica said, turning in her bed to face Lily's direction. Silence consumed them again, well, that is apart from the hairdryer which just seemed to be getting louder.

"Lily…" Felicity whispered softly and Lily turned in her bed to face her. "Yeah?"

"What if Remus doesn't like me?" she whispered so softly it was only just audible over the hairdryer.

"Of course he would Fe, why wouldn't he?" Lily said gently.



"I dunno, maybe his taste has changed…" she said, her voice slipping into silence.

"Well, just be yourself. Then you'll know whether he likes you for you or he liked you for what Claudia made you,"

"How?" Lily sighed, she wondered how to put this nicely.

"Well, try and be a little less, well, ditzy around him?" Lily squeezed her eyes tight, waiting for Felicity to scream at her, or throw something at her or ignore her but all she said was

"You know, I never used to be like this. When I first arrived here I couldn't wait to learn everything I could. I used to spend my time in the library doing homework and I spent my weekends reading under the trees in the courtyard. My birthday's in January and that year my older cousin, who's a muggle, sent me a copy of Vogue and one weekend I was reading it under a tree in the courtyard and Claudia noticed me reading it and we've been friends ever since. But now, looking back it doesn't really seem like a friendship… I loved who Claudia was, I loved her clothes, her connections, her confidence. She would always tell me what to do, not in the motherly sense, but in the sense of how to become more popular. By the end of the year, my grades had plummeted, my vocabulary had shrunk and been filled with new words that aren't found in a dictionary. I returned home for the summer, abandoning my old friends and spending every other day with Claudia either shopping or reading magazines. Soon I knew who was who in the wizarding world, what was hot, what was not, how to dress, shop, act, speak and I became Felicity. And it wasn't until I saw fling herself over Remus that what she did, how she acted and how I had been molded, wasn't that great after all…"

The hairdryer turned off and they fell silent, Jessica's fake snores automatically filled the room as Patience opened the door and slipped into the room and quietly slipped into bed. It was when Lily was in the state of being, between awake and asleep, that she heard the sound of a door closing. Thinking the wind must have shut the bathroom door, Lily was consumed by the darkness as the trees outside the window stood unmoving.

-:-



The next morning when Lily stirred, Jessica's snores, these ones being real, were still filling the room. Patience's bed was made, her belongs gone telling Lily she had left already to catch the train home. Although she was not fond of the idea of going home, she would rather than go home than be forced to be around her roommates and since Claudia was gone, there was no point in her staying and now Claudia was being horrid to her she didn't even have her party to look forward to. Claudia's bed remained the same that it had last night and Felicity's bed was empty and the shower was running.

Lily walked over to the seat by the window and sat down, staring out at the bare grounds. She hoped it would snow this year, but it was only the second week in December so there was still hope left. The bathroom door opened and Lily turned around to see Felicity, looking a little worse for wear.

"Are you alright Fe?" Lily asked, looking at Felicity's appearance. If truth be told, it looked like she had just let herself go. Her brown hair looked thin and straggly past her shoulders, she was wearing checkered pants that were not at all flattering to her body type and she was her top was covered in red spots that made the small, pin prick pimple se had on her chin look exaggerated.

"I don't know who I'm supposed to be. All I remember is being Claudia's doll, but I also want to be who Remus wants and I want to be me as well," Felicity said, sighing and sitting down on her bed. Lily got up from her window seat and walked over to Felicity and sat down next to her.

"Do you trust me?" Lily asked her. Felicity looked up at Lily with a raised eyebrow.

"Uh oh. What are you going to do to me?" she asked, puzzled and with a hint of panic in her voice.

"Do you trust me?" Lily asked her again and Felicity sighed and shrugged.

"Sure, why not," and Lily grinned. "Come on" she said and dragged Felicity back into the bathroom.

Half an hour, one showers, one blow dry, one curler, one eyeliner, one mascara, one pink lip gloss, one purple, gold and red stripped jumper, one pair of dark denim, one pair of pink converses and one 

sound asleep snorer later, Felicity emerged from the bathroom looking like a pretty, fifteen year old, teenager. Lily marveled her handy work, pretty damn proud of herself. She had taken what she learnt about clothes and make up and transformed the girl who she had learnt it all from into something she could call herself.

The style of jumper hugged her hips and emphasized her curves, the jeans made her legs look longer, the light application of eyeliner just highlighted her light eyes and the mascara made her lashes longer and the pink lip gloss matched her converses. Lily had blown her hair to give it more body and went over her loose curls with the curler to exaggerate them.

"Well?" Lily asked her, peering over her shoulder as she stared at her reflection.

"It's me,"

_**A/N:**__ Well, it's a month sooner and 1000 words longer, do you love me or what? I know it doesn't have as much comedy in this chapter but I needed to explain all this to everyone before we move on. But please children, do not fret! For it is the Christmas Holidays (oh I wish! Still, in fanfic anything can be real…) and fun is abound! There is: Did Remus actually like Felicity, Will Felicity win his Heart For the First of Perhaps the Second Time, What Happens When Sirius has Too Much Punch, PLUS the PART-AY and they ever asked question: Will It Be Crashed" Stay Tuned! __**IMPORTANT NOTICE:**_

_What I would like to say in this Authors Note which I hope people read and I'm not just practicing my typing skills, but I want to tell everyone that reviewed Chapter 9 that I LOVE YOU!! That was the most reviews I've ever received for this story and I'm so happy and so KEEP IT UP!! The last time this happened, you guys all ABANDONED ME!! :'( And so I will give everyone who reviews this chapter a hug, kiss and a cookie! Please people, lets join together and try to beat the record of 21! Ha, 21….. okay random, moving on. In more thanks I will list all the people who are on my love list at the moment because THEY, unlike SOOOOOO many others, DIDIN'T bother to review. People, if you read a story, u need to tell the author how much u liked, or hated their writing so they have some idea as to how the story is going! Anyway, without ado I would like to thank:_ _**Grey Mustang, breeza13, Comicrileef, Cherrykisses21, Lilyflower101, Mariano's-twins, Katsy17, louise, Professor of Pig-latin, just.like.jess, Lady Knight Keladry, the muddy worm, Penelope Richmond, Someone aka Me, babydoll223 99, zEthHPfrEaK, the voice of singing clouds, SpiceChaiPrincessOfDoom, **_

_**prongsies.lady, GryffindorsOwnLily and firewalker32!!**__ I love you all mwa! Xoxo_

_Common people, another record and this has my undivided attention!_

_Moonlight Honeysuckle xox_


	11. Breaking In New Identities

_Disclaimer: All I need is a mirror to prove that I am not JK, and one MRI to prove that Harry was not created in my brain._

Chapter 11: Breaking In New Identities.

Jessica stifled a yawn and rolled over, trying to grasp at the straws of sleep that were slipping from her reach. Trying to squeeze deeper under the covers to keep the warmth from escaping, she sighed, giving up and swung her legs out of the bed. It was now she realized why she couldn't get to sleep, it was too quiet. She was so used to the sound of the shower, the hairdryer, the complaints and the searching of lost items that for the first time it was quiet, she couldn't get to sleep.

She got up and stretched and saw Lily and Felicity sitting on Lily's bed and she bounded over to join them. When she sat down, she instantly felt uncomfortable. Both Lily and Felicity were looking at her expectantly and that made her feel nervous.

"What?" she asked, puzzled, looking between the two. Lily shook her head and laughed.

"Wow, you're worse than me!" Jessica looked between Lily and Felicity again, this time pausing longer on Felicity. She tilted her head to the side and squinted her eyes.

"You know, I know I'm supposed to be seeing something, yet I'm just not quite getting it," she said, tilting her head back up, and looking at Lily expectantly, waiting for her to explain.

"Does Felicity still look like Claudia?" Lily asked her and Jessica squinted her eyes again.

"Hey, yeah! She doesn't ay!" she said happily and Lily rolled her eyes "Anyways, what are you lot talking about this early in the morning?"

"I wasn't under the impression that 11:56 wasn't counted as morning" Felicity said, nodding her 

head in the direction of the clock on Lily's bedside table.

"Wow, I guess I slept a little later than I thought. Ah, well, I never liked breakfast that much anyway, lets go get some lunch," Jessica said with enthusiasm, jumping off the bed and headed towards the door.

"Like that?" Felicity inquired, looking Jessica up and down. Jessica looked down at her white tee and brown track pants.

"Yeah, problem?"

"You do realize that there will be guys down in the Great Hall, even if most of the school has gone home?" Felicity said, raising her eyebrow in confusion.

"Oh, let her be Fe. If she wants to wear that, she should be able to," Lily told her, getting up and joining Jessica at the door "So you coming?"

"Fine," grumbled Felicity, swinging her feet of the bed, standing up and joining them as they walked out the door.

-:-

James was sitting next to Sirius and Remus on the couch down in the common room, playing with a set of gobstones that were accidently left behind by a second year. James had just scored one of Remus's stones (which was quite an odd occurrence) and was standing up doing the happy finger dance when he saw Lily, Felicity and Jess finally making their first appearance of the day. James waved to them before they exited and sat down.

"Who were they?" Sirius asked James without looking up from the board with a pained expression 

on his face which only occurred on those rare opportune moments when he was trying to think.

"Lily, Jess and Fe," James replied as he began plotting his next move.

"Lily, _Jess_ and _Fe_?" Remus asked with suspicion as he looked up over The Daily Prophet he was reading in between turns.

"Oh, my mistake. It's Miss Evans, Miss Wallace and Miss Hamon, isn't it?" James retorted and with one flick of the wrist, knocked three of Sirius's stones out and half on one of Remus's. Remus continued to keep his eyebrow raised but Sirius conveniently decided to make a distraction.

"Oh that's SO mature James. Just target all my stones so you can win, this is so not fair," he complained, sliding to the floor with his arms folded across his chest with a pout.

"Aw, cheer up Sirius. One day you might be able to knock one of mine out on purpose too," James said sweetly and Sirius ignored him.

"Anyway, on a total and completely different subject that has nothing to do with what we are doing or talking about and just from an innocent bystander's point of view who has an abnormally large curiosity, who was that with Lily?" Sirius asked, his head turning back and forth like a small child deciding on which parent was more likely to give them candy.

"Felicity and Jessica?" James asked him slowly, thinking back as he was sure that they had covered this "Besides, weren't you so engrossed in how badly you're losing that you didn't see them?"

"Oh James, I have eyes everywhere. Now, who's going to tell me?" he asked them as James and Remus made eye contact when Sirius said 'everywhere'.

"Sirius, you may have many eyes but I think you need a couple more ears," Remus said curtly, 

returning to the prophet and Sirius instantly switched his attention to James.

"Okay, let me say this slowly Padfoot. The two girls that Lily was with were Jessica Hamon and Felicity Wallace," James said, saying each individual word slowly for Sirius's benefit.

"You sure?" Sirius asked him and James replied, slightly confused "Yeah? Why?"

"Well, I know that the one in trackies was Jessica but the other one didn't look a thing like Felicity," Sirius said, absentmindedly as the pained expression returned to his face.

"Felicity didn't look any different to me, you Remus?" James asked and his comment was only answered with a grunt from behind the paper.

"Oh sorry, I forgot, you don't even notice Felicity at all, do you?" James replied with a hint of anger in his voice as a sudden protective feeling overwhelmed him. Remus looked up from the Prophet again.

"Mate, just drop it," Remus said, folding the paper over and began reading the Quidditch section. Sirius gave up the game of gobstones as a bad job and stood up.

"I'm going to go and find out who that was with Lily. Either of you coming?" Sirius asked, again looking back and forth between the two.

"Sure, I'll come with you to find Lily, Jessica and Felicity," James replied, standing up and heading towards the portrait hole. Sirius remained where he stood, staring at Remus, waiting for his reply. Remus sighed, folded his paper in half and placed it down on the coffee table.

"Why not? Can't be any worse than continuingly reading about how bad the Chudley Cannon's are performing again this season," Remus said thoughtfully, standing up and following Sirius as he walked over to James and out the portrait hole. Sirius and James had a continuous running commentary as 

they walked towards the entrance hall between Sirius continually complaining that James and Remus were continually picking on him at gobstones and correcting the 6th year Hufflepuff prefect who was teaching a suite of armor Christmas carols and insisting that they were the ones who got it all wrong not them, that James barely noticed that Remus was there at all.

Once entering the Entrance Hall, Sirius spent no time waiting and sped into the Great Hall and made a beeline for the Gryffindor table, and instantly began heaping spoonfuls of Shepherd's Pie onto a plate.

"I thought you wanted to find that 'mystery woman'?" James asked as he and Remus sat down on either side of him.

"I do and I found her," Sirius said, hitting Remus's hand as he tried to steal some of his pie and pointed at the other end of the Gryffindor table. Sure enough, when James turned his head in the direction Sirius had pointed to, he found Felicity sitting between Lily and Jessica, an occurrence that was only even seen on a day to day basis by James.

"Well? Aren't you going to talk to them? Or did you drag us all the way down here for nothing?" Remus asked, again going in for the Shepherd's Pie and again getting swatted away by Sirius who was becoming very protective.

"Yes, I shall. On a full stomach of course," he told James and started building a fort around his plate with cups, cutlery and salt and pepper shakers.

"Of course," James said, before helping himself to some of the pie. Remus summoned his paper from the common room and continued to read the Quidditch section. Ten minutes later Sirius still had a small mountain of food on his plate and so James and Remus agreed it was high time to take down the wall. With armies attacking from both the west and eastern boarder's, Sirius's plate had no chance.

"All gone Sirius buddy boy, now get your butt over there," Remus grinned after putting the last 

spoonful in his mouth and grinning through the potato. Sirius, grumbling, stood up, brushed himself down and walked along the table and tapped the pretty brunette with the figure hugging jumper on the shoulder. All three girls, the brunette, the red head and chocolate brown turned around to look at him. What was with girls when someone called their friends name they all turned around? You'd think they would have recognized their own name by now.

"Hello my lovely," Sirius purred and all three girls raised their eyebrows. God damn it what was with the blood unison?

"What do you want Black?" Lily asked him suspiciously as he didn't take his eyes of Felicity.

"I don't recall addressing myself to you Miss Evans. I was actually addressing this gorgeous brunette in front of me. I don't believe we've met before, my name is Sirius Black," he announced, giving a low, sweeping bow.

"I know," Felicity said simply as Sirius stood up again. Sirius began grinning from ear to ear.

"Ah, I see my reputation precedes me, how wonderful yet I feel somewhat guilty, for I do not know yours," he purred as he took Felicity's hand as she began feeling a mixture of flattery and alarm.

"Yes you –" Jessica began to snap at him but was hushed with a kick from Lily from under the table. Jessica shot her a confused look and Lily mouthed over Felicity's head '_Let him find out himself'_ without fear of being seen as Sirius had not once taken his eyes of Felicity.

"Mr. Black, I think you are under the wrong impression about me," Felicity began and slowly slipped her hand from his.

"Fear not, for the only impression I have of you is the one that is forming right now," Sirius continued smiling as Felicity stopped pulling her hand back.

"All the same Mr. Black, you seem to be under the impression that we have not met," Felicity said "And I must tell you that that is a false impression,"

"Forgive me for my ignorance, but all the same I cannot believe that I would have seen a wonderful maiden like you before and continued walking past," Jessica rolled her eyes and was sitting on the edge of her seat waiting for the knights of the round table to come bursting into the hall.

"Perhaps your name will help jog my memory? Or perhaps your house?" Sirius begged, whilst Lily and Jessica sat by watching without being noticed and waiting for the big BOOM.

"Well, I'm in Gryffindor…" Felicity said and Sirius broke away "And what a fine house Gryffindor is I must say. Have I mentioned that I also am in Gryffindor? Could this possibly be where the meeting you mentioned occurred?"

"Well, that's where the fair few of them have occurred," Felicity said and Sirius punched his arm up into the air in triumph.

"I knew I had seen you somewhere. Now, your name fair lady?" Sirius almost whispered and if he had been sitting on a seat he would have been sitting on the edge in anticipation.

"Felicity" she said simply and the girls watched with glee as his gigantic smile began to decline.

"Felicity?" he repeated slowly and she nodded.

"Well, I only know of one Felicity but surely…" he was unable to continue as the three girls stood up.

"That's right, _Mr._ Black. I'm Felicity Wallace and why you would not recognize me in the first place is an absolute insult!" Snickering, the three girls left the hall and that is when the surrounding 

occupants of the Gryffindor table felt it was safe enough to burst into laughter. Members of other houses turned around in their seats to see what the commotion was all about, but upon seeing Sirius standing up next to the table, they turned back around, disappointed that they had missed the latest Marauder's escapade.

James and Remus were the ones who's roars of laughter with the loudest. Sirius trudged back to the table, sat down in his earlier vacated seat and began rebuilding his mountain.

"You guys suck," Sirius muttered and they grinned.

"But Sirius, that's why you love us!" James grinned and with the help from Remus they lifted him up out of his seat and away from his beloved pie.

-:-

"How thick can you get?" Jessica said with disbelieve as they arrived back in the common room.

"Apparently quite," Lily replied as she slumped back in her favourite pink arm chair near the fire.

"I didn't realize I looked so different" Felicity stated as she and Jessica sat down on the couch next to the arm chair.

"Well for a change your not plastid with identical make-up with Claudia and the only way anyone could tell you apart was the fact you have wavy, light brown hair and Claudia had straight blonde hair," Jessica stated and Felicity shot her a dirty look.

"We did NOT wear identical make-up! Our colour compatibility is totally different," she snapped and picked up a Charms textbook and began reading it.

"Yeah, I still need to get used to seeing her do stuff like that," Jessica told Lily, tilting her head in the direction of the girl complaining about colour compatibility voluntarily reading a text book. Lily rolled her eyes at her two friends.

'_Wow'_ she thought _'I just called them my friends,'_ Lily smiled.

"Guys, it's the holidays! Are we just going to sit up here reading a text book and playing with a packet of exploding snap?" Lily asked her friends after they had sat in silence for five minutes. Lily hated silence. Jessica looked up, grinning sheepishly as she stopped building her tower of cards.

"I wanted to go Christmas shopping but I didn't realize that you couldn't go shopping over the Christmas holidays because all the teachers go home and no one can supervise," Felicity complained, relinquishing her text book to the coffee table.

"I think I know a way around that," Lily said, smiling her smile that told the others that she had a plan.

-:-

"I'm hungry," grumbled Sirius as they trudged up the marble staircase. James rolled his eyes as Remus chose to reply.

"You ate a total for fifty-six seconds ago,"

"Yeah, but I wasn't finished! Besides, you guys ate half of it," he complained as he lagged behind the others, climbing at a slower pace.

"Sirius, you do no that obesity is a growing problem here in the UK?" James said sweetly and Sirius 

glared.

"Ruddy bastard,"

"Would you love me if I wasn't?" James joked and began running until he realized Sirius wasn't chasing after him.

"What's wrong Padfoot, not up for a chase?"

"No my dear Prongs, but I have no sugar in my system to allow me to run," he told them as he sunk down and sat on the top stair "Well, are you guys gonna carry me or what?"

"Okay, one thing I'm absolutely positive about is I refuse to carry you up six flights of stairs," Remus told him and began walking over to where James had stopped running.

"Aww, come on guys! I'm desperate, I need sugar and I ate the last of it last night, the packet of sugar quills under Remus's mattress, and now I need some,"

"Lets say, we could go to Honeydukes, would you have a problem with walking?" James called from the far end of the corridor as Sirius jumped of the step so fast it was like he had received an electric shock. That was, until, his ankle remained embedded in the stairs.

"Well, I wouldn't have a problem with walking except that my foot as been eaten by the step," Sirius complained and Remus and James jogged back to help him win the fight for his foot. They each took an arm and pulled and eventually the step was forced to regurgitate Sirius's poor foot. James turned around and signaled for them to follow.

"Follow me, I know a way,"

-:-

"It's just around here," she told Felicity and Jessica over her shoulder as they rounded the corner and the statue of the one eyed witch came into view.

"Where?" Felicity asked as she looked around the corridor which was empty of anything except for the statue.

"The statue," Lily said, indicating with her head as they walked along the corridor to reach it. Lily took out her wand as she approached the statue, and when she looked around to make sure no one else but them were there, she heard voices approaching from the other end of the corridor.

"Quick," she told Jessica and Felicity, taking out her want, tapping the witches hump and muttered 'Dissendium'. The hump opened and she ushered Felicity forward to go through first.

"Good thing I've been dieting," Felicity muttered after taking one look at the hole. She stepped up and slid down the small tunnel.

"See, this is why I shouldn't of had extra pudding last night," Jessica groaned and slid down after Felicity. Judging the distance of the voices, Lily made her decision. She sealed the hump and concealed her self behind the statue, so no one except someone who walked behind the statue would be able to see her.

"Since when do you come up with these smart ideas Prongs? Usually I'm the one who comes up with all the smart plans," Lily heard the voice of one of the approaches say.

"Ha, you and the word 'smart' are never used together in the same sentence," James laughed as they came around the statue and saw Lily sitting there. They all stopped in mid step.

"What are you doing here?" Sirius asked her suspiciously, looking at the red head sitting on the cold, stone floor.

"Waiting for you people to pass by," Lily said, standing up and brushing herself down. "What are you doing here?"

"Was there a reason why someone such as yourself would be hiding behind a statue to avoid us?" Sirius inquired, and Lily raised an eyebrow.

"Uh no, just avoiding seeing your face. Why does there have to be a reason?" Lily asked him sweetly. Sirius shook his head and stopped as the four of them heard the sound of tapping. Lily cringed. Remus raised his eyebrow.

"Christmas shopping," she grimaced

"Honeydukes," James told her, ignoring the looks Sirius and Remus were giving him and tapped the hump.

"Dissendium," he commanded and said "After you," to Lily when the hole revealed itself. James offered his hand to Lily as an aid to get up and although she was more than capable of getting into the hole herself, she took his hand just the same.

"You coming?" James asked Sirius and Remus after Lily had slid down and after giving James inquiring looks, they followed him down.

Lily had reached the bottom of the slid and landed on her bottom with a thump. Felicity and Jessica offered her their hands and they pulled her off.

"Was that your idea of a joke?" Felicity demanded as Lily brushed herself down "Leaving us down in this dark, damp tunnel?"

"No, I bumped into these people," She replied as James, Sirius and Remus tumbled down.

"You brought them down here? Why?" Felicity demanded, reminding Lily she didn't know about their 'history'.

"No, surprisingly, they knew about it too," Lily said, before turning her back to her and muttering 'Lumos'.

"Oh yes, surprisingly," Sirius grumbled as he picked himself off the floor.

"Do you mind if we accompany you ladies?" James asked, smiling at Lily. Sirius and Jessica were staring at each other, Jessica trying not to burst out laughing at his stupidity earlier that morning and Sirius was turning a light shade of pink, Remus was avoiding eye contact with Felicity at all cost, though on those rare occasions when he risked a glimpse of her he saw her eyes looking damp.

"Sure, why not," Lily said to James, and they lead the others into the tunnel. A few minutes later, Lily felt something on her other hand which was hanging by her side and looked down to see James's hand snaking around it.

"Patience and Claudia aren't here, we don't have to pretend," Lily muttered so only he could here.

"I know," said James, without letting go. Lily hesitated but didn't force her hand away. She looked over her shoulder and saw Felicity walking right behind them, Remus was at the very end of their parade so to speak and Sirius and Jessica were in between the two and Jessica was still paying him out for that mornings events.

"Look," she whispered to James, nodding her head over her shoulder. James turned around and understood what she was talking about.

"Now, this just won't do," he said under his breath but before either of them could do a thing about it, they had arrived under Honeyduke's cellar. After signaling for Jessica and Sirius to stop their bickering, James listened for sounds of footsteps above. When no noise occurred, Lily helped James push the stone slab across and one by one they hoisted themselves out.

Since they were there, they agreed it was best to let Sirius loose in Honeydukes than have the eternal battle of getting him through the shop without causing harm to human or sweet. An hour later, Felicity stood near the door with her small bag of crystallized pineapple, her one weakness she had learnt to control, Lily stood with a large paper bag full to the hilt with sweets, Jessica was standing there with three small carry bags stuffed full with sweets and Remus was standing next to Lily, the furthest he could get from Felicity with a block of Honeyduke's Dark Swirl.

James soon came into view dragging a mad Sirius and carrying five odd bags full to the brim with sweets of all different shapes and colour. Sirius was carrying a couple more bags that James and Lily wasn't sure if James was carrying his own supply or helping Sirius carry his.

"Drinks anyone?" James asked and four out of the six faces dropped.

"Sure, Three Broomsticks?" Lily asked as she and James led the others down the main street and into the bright pub.

"I'll buy, shall I?" Remus asked and speed away from the group like he couldn't escape fast enough and waited in line in the short cue that had formed in front of the bar.

"There's a spare table over there," Jessica said, pointing at a table over the far side of the bar, in a secluded sort of area. The five of them walked over and took their seats around the small table, waiting for Remus to return with the drinks. James started up a conversation with Jessica about their worst received Christmas presents and Lily, who couldn't wait for Remus to get back, ignored the 

suspicious looks she was receiving from Sirius.

When James had made it to his seventh Christmas, Remus returned hovering a tray filled with six glasses of Butterbeer in front of him and placed it neatly on the middle of the table. They all helped themselves to a glass as silence consumed them all as they took their drink, before James continued his talk about Christmas presents with Jessica and Lily decided to spare Remus and begin a conversation about Charms.

When Lily was half way through her glass of Butterbeer, she decided it was time. Jumping up from her seat she announced.

"I need to go to the bathroom. Jessica, come with me?" she said, glaring at Jessica.

"But, I don't need-" she began but Lily strengthened her glare and Jessica stood up and followed her automatically.

"You know, I've always wondered why girls go to the bathrooms in twos," James thought out loud, directing his comment to Sirius hopping that his curious nature would come through.

"Me too, wanna find out?" Sirius said, and James grinning that it worked, jumped up and they followed after the girls, leaving Remus and Felicity sitting together, alone.

_**A/N: YAY! Another Chappie Up! YAY! Okay, **__**Important Notice:**__** The time it takes me to update my story I am now giving to the power of the masses. The more reviews I get, the faster I update. So if you want me to update quick, you guys have to all review! Thank You to Cherrykisses21, breeza13, Prongsy Loves Lily, Comicrileef, firewalker32, Someone aka Me, babydoll223 99, Lady Knight Keladry, Professor of Pig-latin, serenity12345, SpiceChaiPrincessOfDoom, Grey Mustang and zEthHPfrEak for being great enough to review!! Remember, the more reviews, the sooner the chapter! Hugs to all who reviewed!! **_

_**Moonlight Honeysuckle **_


	12. Drinking Results in Many Things

_Disclaimer:I don't own harry potter, and while we're going on about all the things in life I don't own __I don't own my own dvd player, I don't own my brother's wii, I don't own my friends Disney movie collection or the wonderfully written twilight series. End of Rant._

**Chapter 12:Drinking Results In Many Things**

"Well," Remus stated moments later once silence had consumed over the small table "This is sufficiently awkward,"

Felicity just gulped down an unladylike amount of Butterbeer in her haste to avoid replying. Remus raised an eyebrow in her direction.

"Lucky for you Butterbeer is non-alcoholic," he muttered as Felicity slammed down her mug on the counter.

"Yes, lucky," she responded in a voice that seemed nearly an octave higher than her usual voice. Remus didn't respond, but continued playing with the condensation rings the bottom of the mugs had created on the wooden table.

"You really trust Black and Potter to go to the bathroom together?" Felicity joked, trying to break the ice. Remus looked up from his condensation masterpiece and Felicity dropped her smile at once.

"You do no why they left to go to the bathroom, don't you?" Remus asked her, giving her a look of incompetence.

"Yes!" Felicity responded defensively, her voice returning to the higher octave "I'm smarter than you give me credit for,"

"Well you could have fooled me," Remus muttered under his breath, returning to his circles.

"Well, you did fool me," Felicity snapped, before raising her glass and taking another large swig.

"Excuse me?" Remus asked her, his hands turning into fists on the table, ruining the perfect circle he had drawn.

"You heard me," Felicity said shrilly before wondering aloud "I wonder if i could get some Firewhisky,"

"So what if it was a dare? I didn't think we were serious or anything. I thought it was just fun," Remus growled across the table as Felicity looked around for the bartender.

"You have the reputation of being the smartest of the Marauders. The other two must be just plain stupid then," Felicity snapped, returning her eyes to Remus. "I really did like you Remus, and to let you in on a bit of a secret, I've liked you ever since you were going out with Claudia. There, I've said it. You were my idea of the perfect guy. I had seen you around Claudia, holding her hand on the way to class, the way you kissed her goodnight. I was jealous of Claudia, yet this year I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. You and Claudia were definitely over and you had said yes to me. The weeks we were going out were one of the best of my life, until I found out that none of it, not a bit, was real. All those kisses goodnight, all the times we held hands walking down the corridor, you were just laughing behind my back to your friends. In the end though, I guess the dare's on me then," Felicity flung back her head and downed the rest of the Butterbeer in one quick swig, slamming the empty mug on the table.

"I'm going to find someone to buy me a Firewhisky," she snapped, pushing her stool back and storming off towards the bar.

-:-

"This is fun," Sirius said as he and James skipped off towards the bathroom, following behind Lily and Jessica who practically bolted from the table.

"We're going to the bathroom Sirius, haven't you done that before?" Jessica asked him, giving him a look.

"Sure I have, just not in pairs. Bags going in with Lily," he smiled, winking at Lily who rolled her eyes.

"You wish Black," she said as James punched him in the arm for that insensitive comment.

"So what happens now," Jessica asked Lily as Sirius rubbed his arm up and down and James smiled like a cat. Lily pointed to the door "we listen,"

All at once there was a scramble to get back to the door first. Sirius was leading but James was catching up so Sirius decided to stick his foot out. And although James was a star Quidditch player, he was useless on his feet and so tripped and fell head first into the door.

"Ha. Now we're even," Sirius said, pushing James's crumpled body away, ignoring his moan of protest and settled himself down in a crouch position.

"Yeah, but unlike you, I didn't deserve my fate," James growled back, kicking Sirius in the butt with his foot , causing Sirius to loose his balance and fall face first into Jessica who had just sat down next to him.

"Urgh Black! Get off me!" She exclaimed, trying to push the massive lump off her.

"Nah, you love it," Sirius whispered in her ear just as she found his arm.

"OWWW!" Sirius yelled and James slapped a hand instantly over the top of his mouth to muffle his boisterous voice.

"God Jessica, you hit like a man!" he exclaimed under his breath when James was kind enough to move his hand.

"Yeah, and you take it like a girl," Jessica retorted, returning her ear to the door. James sniggered and Lily took no notice, straining her ears to hear.

"Someone should invent something to make it easy to eardrops," Lily said once James and Sirius and settled themselves down and placed their ears against the wood.

"Pfft it would never happen. The only people who would invent something like this are people like us and since I'm going to be a star Quidditch player when I leave school, I doubt I will have time to assist the younger generations of earsdroppers," Sirius told Lily, his chest puffing up slightly as he revealed his ambition.

"Sure, a star Quidditch player. Pity you can't lift yourself off the ground," Jessica smirked, causing James to laugh and Sirius's chest to deflate.

"You'll see," Sirius muttered under his breath "One day, you'll see,"

"I'm sure we will see you more than a foot above the ground some day but right now we are either going to hear a break – up or witness a reunion. Twould be easier if you helped," Lily said, raising her voice a little and the small group fell silent.

"I've never been so close to a bathroom and not being allowed to go," Sirius complained moments later and the other three groaned "Seriously Lily, I'm busting! Can't I just go ..."

"Black, if you keep talking I will personally make sure you loose the function to go to the bathroom all together," Jessica snapped, swinging her head around to face Sirius and glaring at him.

"Just think about that Padfoot. If she hits like a man imagine how hard her kicks will be," James muttered to Sirius who winced.

"I guess I can hold on a little longer ..." Sirius said, getting himself comfortable against the door before silence consumed the group once more.

-:-

Remus watched her leave and walk over the bar and immediately strike up a conversation with a wizard around twenty-four. He shook his head and walked over to the door that lead to the bathrooms and pulled, like it said on the handle. Four bodies fell forward through the door.

"Great, he found us. Can I PLEASE go to the bathroom now?" Sirius begged Lily, jumping up immediately.

"Sure, why not," Lily grumbled as Jessica got to her feet and held out her hands to help Lily up.

"We should be going now, see you around Remus," Jessica said, once pulling Lily to her feet and the walked away towards the bar. Remus turned to James who was still sitting on the floor looking guilty.

"You know you have some explaining to do," Remus stated and James nodded, continuing to look guilty. Remus grudgingly held out an arm to James and pulled him to his feet.

"Come on, lets get out of here," Remus growled, walking towards the exit.

"Wait, what about Padfoot?" James asked "He's still in the bathroom,"

"Prongs, you know as well as I do that once Sirius enters a bathroom, it will be a while until he returns," Remus said over his shoulder as he continued to walk towards the door. James grudgingly followed.

-:-

"So how did it go?" Lily asked when she and Jessica found Felicity down near the end of the bar. Felicity turned around to face them.

"Horrible. Plain fucking horrible," she said, stating each individual word. Lily winced. Jessica held your nose.

"I know you've just had a traumatic experience and everything but, no offense, your breath stinks," she said, her voice coming out weird from holding her nose. Felicity shrugged.

"I dunno, its some side affect you get after you've had about two Firewhiskeys,"

"Firewhisky!" Lily shrieked

"Two?" Jessica exclaimed.

"How'd you get your hands onto a Firewhisky?" Lily demanded, grabbing Felicity's shoulders.

"There was some hunk here at the bar and after a bit of flirting he asked me if he could order me a drink and I said Firewhisky and ta da! Firewhisky," Felicity told Lily before hiccupping.

"Who's the guy?" Jessica growled and Felicity managed to keep her balance as she shrugged.

"I dunno, after one of these they all started to look alike. He said he was going to the bathroom but he was probably just using it as an excuse to get away from me. They always make excuses," Felicity grumbled and Lily dropped her shoulders, letting Felicity to drop back onto the bar stool.

"I'm going to find this idiot," Lily told Jessica, turning on her heel and storming away. Jessica turned to Felicity.

"Do you think it would have stopped her if I reminded her that he was the men's bathroom?" she asked. Felicity hiccupped again. "I don't know. She's a very nice girl, except her taste in pajamas. That's awful," Felicity replied, swaying in her seat. Jessica sighed.

"This is going to be fun,"

-:-

Lily pulled the bathroom door back with such force it nearly snapped as she flung herself into the passage way beyond, heading towards the door with the stick man. That door too said pull so indeed she did, only to get blinded upon entering. Every surface of the bathroom had Sirius's face on it.

"What, the hell, did you do? Sirius!" Lily demanded as he turned his head to face her. A closer look at the walls revealed it was not several Siriuses but several reflections of Sirius.

"Hey Lilykins. I've just been redecorating, you like?" he gestured to the walls around him.

"So when you asked to go to the bathroom, you just wanted to redecorate?" Lily asked him in bewildment.

"Gosh no. I really did need to go. It felt good when I did. It was like – "

"Yeah, spare us the details," Lily interrupted "Continue,"

"Anyways, when I came out from the cubical I went straight to the sinks and when I looked up to admire my bone structure and facial features, as usual and I was only given a mirror this size to look at myself in," he took out his wand and drew in a purple smoke a square around twenty centimeters by twenty centimeters.

"Of course, this wouldn't do so I thought I would do the pub a favour and redecorate, with a small fee I might add,"

"And you didn't consider asking the pub owner if you could do it first, and your expecting a payment and considering this is a pub and so usually only drunk men use this bathroom and since men look shit after drinking, the owners were kind enough to only provide minimal reflection," Lily replied raising an eyebrow. Sirius's smile faded and he turned sulky.

"I'll put it back to normal when I'm done, happy?" Lily smiled. "Very,"

"So what are you doing in here? You do remember this is a men's bathroom, not that I'm complaining of course, but usually you have some strange purpose about what you're doing," Sirius asked her, continuing to admire his flawless skin. Lily couldn't resist, she gave him a zit.

"That's not very nice," Sirius growled, taking out his wand and removing the magical zit "No wonder guys don't ask girls about anything they don't know,"

"Some guy bought Felicity two glasses of Firewhisky and I'm going to return the favour. She said he came to the bathroom but she's too drunk to tell the difference between an excuse and a full bladder. Anyone in here with you?"

"No. We were leaning against the door to the bathroom remember? And no ones come in since you guys have left. Sorry love," Sirius told her. Lily gave him her look, "Want another zit?"

"Oh no thank you, that one was quite enough. Now, if you don't mind, I would like to finish my admiration in my wonderful world of me by myself before I am to return it to its former, er, glory,"

Lily shrugged, sticking her wand in the back pocket of her jeans and left the bathroom and returned to Jessica and Felicity. Felicity had obviously collapsed and was relying on Jessica to keep her standing up straight, her mouth made into a loopy grin.

"Did you find him?" she asked Lily drowsily, her head rolling.

"Yeah, he was busy admiring himself in his many mirrors," Lily replied, glad she didn't specify to which guy, yet, she though, she probably could have said anything now and Felicity would be none the wiser.

"Sirius?" Jessica mouthed over the top of Felicity's head which was now rested on her shoulder. Lily nodded and Jessica stifled a laugh.

"Well, we'd better get back to school," Jessica said, pulling one of Felicity's arms around her neck and Lily grabbed the other to add to the support. "Are we going back the way we came?"

"Of course, "Lily said and the left the pub and up the high street to Honeydukes. Jessica pushed the door open with her foot and they heaved Felicity through the door. There was a man behind the counter counting the money in the till and his wife was stacking a load of Fizzing Whizzbees onto the shelves near the exit.

"How are we going to get past her?" Jessica whispered and Lily smiled "Follow me,"

"Excuse me, miss?" Lily asked as she and Jessica approached her, carrying Felicity between them. The woman turned around and once seeing Felicity exclaimed "My, what happened?"

"She had an overload on sugar, our friend has a probable stopping. But now she's gone and made herself sick and we were supposed to walk back and we don't think we could support her and so we were wondering if you had a pepper up potion of some kind?" Lily asked her and Jessica poked Felicity in the stomach to get a realistic groan.

"Of course, I have some upstairs if you don't mind waiting for me to nip up and get it?"

"Oh, no. Thank you, we really appreciate it," Lily told the woman who immediately left and walked upstairs. Together, the two of them heaved Felicity off to the storage room, down the stairs. Jessica pushed the stone slab back to reveal the passage and let herself down. Once she was down there Lily gently dropped Felicity down there, before jumping down herself and dragging the slab back where it belonged. They walked along the passage silently for sometime before Jessica asked Lily

"How'd you know she had pepper up potion upstairs?"

"Coz a while ago Sirius did eat too many sweets and we did have to walk all the way up to school and we couldn't carry him, though if we had to we probably could have managed Felicity. She's a twig,"

At the other end of the passage, Lily opened the statue and exited first, checking the coast was clear before pulling an unconscious Felicity through, followed by Jessica. They managed to get themselves back to Gryffindor tower without getting spotted by any professors, the toughest part climbing up the girl's staircase to their room. Jessica kicked this door wide as well and the dragged Felicity's unconscious over to the bed and they flung her down.

"My back! My poor back," Jessica complained, flinging herself on her bed, groaning. Lily collapsed on her own bed.

"Why couldn't we have got some of that potion for Felicity, then we wouldn't have to drag her all the way back and cause permanent injury to my back," Jessica groaned into her pillow.

"Coz then we wouldn't have been able to get back," Lily replied, "Though I almost wish we did and got caught, then I wouldn't have to deal with this pain,"

"I'm never going to move from this bed. My prince charming can go get lost if he comes to kiss me coz I ain't getting up," Jessica told Lily.

"Nap time?" Lily asked, rolling over onto her back.

"Oh yeah,"

-:-

"So, start," Remus demanded as the exited the pub and headed up the high street.

"Start what?" James asked, stalling his response.

"What that was all about," Remus snapped, stopping in his tracks.

"Nothing," James replied, failing to think of something witty.

"Don't give me any of that 'nothing' crap James. God, just tell me what the hell was going on back there,"

"Nothing, I didn't plan anything. Lily and Jessica went to the bathroom and I just thought that Felicity deserved to tell you her side of the story. That's all, so I dragged Sirius to his second favourite place in the world in order to give you guys the privacy you needed to be forced to talk about what happened and for you to here her side. That's all," James explained, studying Remus's face to gage his reaction.

"That's all?" Remus asked, just to make sure. James nodded.

"So you and Lily and Hamon aren't planning anything to make my life hell?" Remus asked and James shook his head. They stood there in silence for a while, James swearing his bum was freezing off but not wanting to complain, he was already on extremely thin ice as it was.

"I should probably go and drag Sirius's butt out," James said, breaking the awkward silence and turning on his foot back into the pub. As he made his way to the bathroom, he looked over towards the bar and saw Jessica supporting Felicity and talking to Lily. Felicity looked in pretty bad shape too. James pushed through the door and walked over the men's room.

"Time to go Sirius. Admiration time over," James sung upon entering the room, taking out his wand and banishing all the mirrors from the walls and replacing the small twenty centimeter by twenty centimeter mirror in its place above the basin.

"Aww, how come admiration time is always over so soon?" he complained as he made his way to James.

"We need to stop it before head gets bigger than the size of the mirror. Besides, we should be getting home soon," James told him, and lead him out the door and back into the pub. They walked the long way around, not keen to face Lily and Jessica at the moment and exited the door and out into the cold.

"Remus must of left, this is where I left him," James said, shrugging his shoulders, not minding that he didn't have to be under interrogation again.

"He might have gone to meet us in Honeydukes. I love Honeydukes, I must say its my favourite shop. It has food, and a bathroom!" Sirius jabbered as they walked up the high streets to the shop. James opened the door and Sirius pushed past him to get into the shop and headed straight for the row with the brightest sweets imaginable. James sighed and followed him in. Remus wasn't in here either, though James, who wasn't totally convinced Remus had left, opted that they stayed there for a bit. Sirius had no objections, he was happy.

The store door tinkered and James peeked around the side of the row to see if it was Remus, however once seeing a three headed figure he ducked back behind the aisle, not wanting to be seen. The three headed figure walked slowly into the store and James finally made out three different figures – two supporting the third in the middle.

"Hey, isn't that Lily and Jessica?" Sirius asked James with a mouthful, making him jump.

"Shh," James ordered and they sinked back into the aisle.

"Wow, Felicity doesn't look too good," Sirius muttered to James who nodded "I think she's unconscious," Just as they approached the woman, the store door opened again. James peeked around the corner just in time to see it was just Remus and he pulled him into the aisle with them.

"Shh," Sirius ordered before Remus opened his mouth.

"What the hell guys?" he whispered, at least abiding by Sirius's law. James nodded his head in the direction of the three girls, one which was now in conversation with the woman.

"Are they supporting Felicity?" Remus asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, she's unconscious," Sirius supplied, repeating James's discovery.

"She's drunk," Remus stated under his breath.

"What? How do you know she's drunk?" James demanded and Remus shrugged.

"When she stormed off before she said she was off to get some Firewhisky and the next thing I know she's chatting up some guy in his twenties to get him to buy her a drink,"

"Don't blame her," James muttered under his breath.

"What did you –"

"Shut up! Look, their leaving," Sirius said pointing, the girls had successfully gotten rid of the woman and were hobbling down the stairs that lead to the passage.

"We should head down too, before the woman comes back. We might not get another chance," James said, heading off towards the door.

"As long as we don't get spotted," Remus told him, before following him towards the door.

"You think I'm thick? I don't want them to spot us either, you might not make it out," James snapped, storming past Remus and to the top of the stairs where he paused. A few minutes he signaled that it was okay for them to come towards the door.

"They just slid the slab back into place," James told them as he walked down the stairs to the cellar storage space. "We should wait a few minutes before going down coz they would be travelling pretty slowly carrying Felicity,"

The sat down under the stairs to the cellar, just in case one of the owners came down here to get or check on anything. Ten minutes later they were in the passage making their way back home. Dragging their feet, they slowly made their way to the common room, none of them talking. James sunk into an arm chair near the fire and checked his watch. It was just past six, they had been in Hogsmeade for the best part of the afternoon.

"I'm going down to get some dinner," Sirius told them, breaking the long silence and heading out of the common room. Remus stormed off to their room and James heard the door slam shut. He couldn't be bothered moving, so he just sat there. He didn't know how long he sat there, just staring at the fire, watching the different colours flicker. The next thing James knew, the common room was dark, the fire reduced to cinders. He groaned and stretched in his seat and turned to look out the window. The stars were out tonight and they were shinning in the inky black sky. A slight breeze was ruffling the roof of the Forbidden Forest, and everything in the grounds was still and silent.

James stood up and stretched again, before making his way over to the window and he leaded against the sill. He really didn't want to go back to the dorm room, even though there was a high percent chance that Remus and Sirius would be asleep, he didn't feel like seeing either of them right now. James stared back up into the heavens, this time noticing that one star was brighter than the rest tonight. Well, James thought, he had nothing better to do. He crept up the boys' stairs and slipped into his room only long enough to grab his invisibility cloak hanging over the end of his bed before slipping back out again.

James threw the cloak over himself, before pushing the portrait hole open and exiting the common room. Hogwarts at night was how James liked Hogwarts best. Hogwarts by day was great too, he had his admirers, they had an audience for their various pranks and they had individuals to pick a duel with. But Hogwarts at night was mystical. Lit with only the light from the stars, the corridors were deserted and free to explore without prying eyes.

He soon found himself at the bottom of a tower and began climbing, slowly, upwards up the hundred or so stairs, he had never bothered to count, before finally opening the door that revealed the circular classroom at the top, all around the edge were different models of telescopes, collected by the school every couple of years or so when one of the older models broke.

The roof was made of plain glass, which you would never guess from looking at the outside, to make the solar system easier to see. It was up here, during one of the midnight classes he had taken in his second year, where he found his ledge. He didn't know how many students had discovered the ledge, because you couldn't see it. Sirius had dared him to hang out of the window, which, of course he did, his pride big back there as well and he lost his balance. But instead of falling off the tower and to his death, he landed on his ledge, the invisible ledge. It was a few years later that he realized Dumbledore or some other teacher would have put the ledge there, somehow knowing that students would lean out the window.

And so, from then on, it had been his ledge. Sirius didn't know, he had said he had held onto the neck of the gargoyle that hung all around the roof. His ledge had become quite useful, whenever he needed to go somewhere quiet, somewhere where no one else would be when he needed to stew over something or just to day dream he had come here. And this is where he was heading. He walked over to the window and flung it wide and stepped out onto the ledge. He turned around to face the corner where he always sat, but someone else was already there.

"Lily?" he asked when he was able to make out her face "How did you know about this place?"

She smiled "James, please, give me some credit. I was there when Sirius dared you to lean out the window. I saw you loose your balance, and I saw you land on your butt, suspended in mid air. It doesn't take much to add two and two together. I've been coming up here ever since,"

"Do you mind if I sit?" James asked, gesturing to the spot next to her. She shrugged and he sat.

"Do you come up here to think too?" Lily asked him and James nodded "Ever since the incident,"

"I like it, it's really peaceful. It was like my little secret, I had a place to escape to when I couldn't bear to be part of reality,"

"So why did you come up here now? Its not like you had to escape from your dorm," James asked, perhaps with a little accusation in his voice.

"I feel asleep as soon as I came back. Felicity was passed out drunk and between Jessica and I we carried her home. I was so exhausted I fell asleep but when I woke up again it was still dark and I couldn't stand laying in bed so I came up here. We really messed things up today, didn't we? Remus is mad at us and Felicity's heading for a bad hangover," Lily said sadly, bringing her knees into her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

"I think it opened Remus's eyes a little. I don't think he noticed the destruction he left behind, like she was a veela and had no choice but follow after her, not being able to check what he left. He's pretty pissed off at me right now but I think Sirius is opening his eyes to the cause we've been fighting for. Give him a little time and he'll be helping us, he's already not wanting to spend his spare time with Remus,"

"All the same, I feel awful. I just keep thinking about how Felicity must have felt, what Remus could have said to make her feel the need to drink. She wouldn't have gone after that guy to buy her a drink, its like one of Claudia's many rules or something, not being a slut. Not that Claudia abides by her rules but all the same, I just keep feeling responsible. I can't even imagine what Felicity's done, I never gave her a second thought before this year. She's like Remus for years and we never even noticed her, it was just Claudia this, Claudia that. Her dreams were coming true this year and even though I knew her now, I couldn't care less either. But the look on her face when Claudia pulled him in for the kiss in the common room, her whole world shattered and now, I vowed I was going to fix it, but I don't know how to,"

"Lily, it's going to work out. We're gathering an army, we're preparing for battle. Love will pull through," James told her and she stifled a laugh.

"Only a guy would refer love to a war zone,"

"Well, love is a battlefield, though I never realized how bloody," He told her and Lily rolled her eyes.

"This is nothing, you should go to the ladies room-"

"Don't mind if I do,"

"And hear what the girls talk, brag and argue about in there. I've seen many brawls over guys, not that I paid much attention, I washed my hands and I was off. But I just feel like somehow we're losing this one,"

"We haven't lost until we wave the white hanky," James told her and she shrugged "Anyway, its time to plan our next line of attack,"

James had several ideas, most involving a bat of some kind and Remus's head, though Lily refused, she didn't want it to turn into an actual war. The through ideas around, bickered and complained, fought for their ideas (though James always lost), and laughed as they joked.

"I better be Felicity's maid of honor at their wedding," Lily told James "All this I'm going through for her, I deserve to have a honeymoon too,"

"You want to go on their honeymoon? Talk about a third wheel,"

"No, I don't want to go on their honeymoon and get that image out of your head right now! I want THE honeymoon. Hmm, somewhere warm, maybe the Bahamas? I have a thing for islands, maybe Hawaii, or Fiji? As long as there is no active volcano and its warm enough for me to wear my little bikini,"

"You have a bikini? You? Of all people?" James asked in surprise, trying to picture Lily the tomboy in a bikini. No, it wasn't working.

"Sod off, yes I have a bikini. Claudia bought it for me when I had my 'make-up'. Hmmm, since that bitch gave it to me, maybe I should burn it. Now that's a thought, 'Unite Against the Bitch, Burn A Bikini!'" Lily snickered.

"No, your only allowed to burn your bikini if I'm allowed to see you in one first," James told her, grinning. Lily looked at him in surprise.

"What, you haven't pictured me in one yet?"

"Grr, you know my mind too well. And yes I tried, but I failed. I failed miserably. I need inspiration,"

"Go look in one of Sirius many magazines," Lily told him sweetly, and James was shocked.

"How do you know about those?"

"How did I not know about those? He has them all over his room," Lily told him and sighed "You know what, I miss this,"

"Miss what exactly? Being suspended in mid air, just a couple odd stories up on magic that could be decades old? Yeah me too," Lily punched him.

"No THIS. Hanging out with you, joking, talking, chilling,"

"Yeah you got that right, it is chilly" but his smiled faded when he saw that she wasn't smiling "Are you really unhappy? Hanging out, being a girl?"

"I used to be, when it was just me, a bitch, a bimbo and a wannabe. But then I started talking with Jessica and she and I became friends and then, and I'm almost ashamed to say, I'm almost happy that Claudia kissed Remus. I'm allowed to be friends with Jess, whenever Claudia's not around which is pretty much all the time coz she spends her time snogging Remus and Felicity is not a Claudia clone anymore, she has her own identity and, maybe best of all, we became friends again," Lily said, looking up at James.

All of a sudden James had a strange feeling. He had a sudden urge to reach out his hand and place it on Lily's. Why, he thought. Why on earth did I want to touch her hand? But things started moving too fast and his arm actually lifted off the ground. It lifted up and began reaching over to Lily, his arm began stretching out ... No! he told himself, Bad arm! But he couldn't stop his arm. Had his subconscious taken over, held up his conscious mind with men in stocking masks and hand guns? But before he could stop, his hand slowly rested on top of Lily. As soon as he made contact, he almost jumped back in shock. Her hand was icy cold. But his hand remained on top of Lily's icy one and it almost felt, kind of nice. Lily's hand, however, hesitated.

"James, uh..." she began but James drew back his hand immediately. His conscious mind had pressed the red alarm button under the counter and the police and come and taken the sub conscious bandits away.

"Sorry, don't know what happened there," he said shortly sitting on his hands.

"What I meant James was, that, I was glad we were friends again. Just friends," Lily told him slowly.

"Yeah, I know," James told her, standing up on their ledge "Though for just a split second I could swear there was something more. See you in the morning Lily," James said, climbing back through the window, leaving Lily sitting alone on what was now their ledge.

_**A/N:Hey guys, here's chapter 12! This chapter gets the award for longest chapter I've ever written! Feeling special? You should be nod.**_

_Ahhh I'm so happy, I've just finished my O.W.Ls (:P) and now I'm on holidays so I have more time to write and I have an urge to go ice skating ... don't ask.__** I have a challenge for all of my wonderful reviewers! If I get over 187 reviews by July 23**__**rd**__**, I will post up the next chapter on my birthday the 24**__**th**__** July! Hope you guys are up to it! **__Thanks To: breeza13, Cherrykisses21, c5vettegirl, babydoll22399, Someone aka Me, Lady Knigh Keladry, firewalker32, Canteloupe, just.like.jess, Grey Mustang, MULAN-IFUWEREGAY, RosalieBellaPotter, lemonlimesweetness, prongsies.lady and the voice of singing clouds for updating!! You rock!_


	13. Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

_Disclaimer:Jo created this world; I just spend my time living in it. NOTICE: PLEASE READ A/N! Thanks!_

_Chapter 13: Rocking Around the Christmas Tree_

Mumble mumble, groan, inhale, oof, patter patter, leap, yell, squeak, groan. The usual Christmas morning in the fifth year boy's dormitory.

"Coommme Onnn" Sirius whinned, continuously bouncing on top of James, up down, up down, the bed sighing and groaning each time gravity kicked in.

"You go open yours," James groaned, flipping over onto his stomach and sticking his head under his white pillow.

"No! It's no fun when you exclaim about your presents to yourself. Please Jamsey Poo? For me?" he battered his eyelashes, which caused Bob, one of their fellow roommates, to stop dead in his tracks as he walked passed James's bed to go to the bathroom. He decided that he would rather not know why Sirius was straddling James and battering his eyelashes at a pillow and so continued walking, this time more quickly, towards the bathroom.

"Gah fine. But you have to get off me, stay on your bed and if I fall asleep during your exclamations, don't wake me," James sighed in defeat, surfacing from under his pillow to see Sirius grinning like a mad hatter.

"Sounds fair. Now UP!" he commanded, leaping off James and onto Remus's bed next to James. Upon landing on the sleeping object, it shot up as if being struck by lightning. Sirius clapped his hands happily, getting up off Remus and jumped across the room and onto his own bed and sat down, looking between James and Remus to see if they were watching and upon seeing that they were, dove for the sack of presents at the end of his bed. Remus and James watched him groggily at first as he exclaimed, oohed, arghed, and swore (Bellatrix had sent him a pink teddy bear with 'I Wov You' on its stomach written in white cursive writing) at his presents. By the time he was finished, both Remus and James were dozing with their heads resting on the end of their beds facing Sirius.

"Do you guys want me to jump you again?" he said loudly and Remus and James suddenly found themselves wide eyed and bushy tailed. Sirius clapped his hands happily again somewhat like a five year old. "Your turn!" he told them, sitting down to admire his presents again. Remus and James continued to stare at Sirius, before diving down and heaving their sacks on their bed and began the ripping.

"Uh, thanks for the licorice wands," James told Sirius after unwrapping the slightly sloppy wrapped present.

"Yeah, thanks," said Remus, holding up an identical packet "So where's the rest?"

"Huh?" asked Sirius in surprise, dropping the packet of sherbet lemons he had been eating (courtesy of Bob) and look of astonishment on his face.

"Well, on the packet it says in large gold letters 'Not for Separate Sale'. So where's the rest?" Remus inquired, raising his eyebrow and Sirius turned pink. Now that James thought about it, these packets of licorice wands were smaller than the ones they bought in Honeydukes, the looked more like the ones you bought in a mixed packet along with Bertie Botts, Chocolate Frogs, Droobles, Fizzing Whizzbees and Sugar Quills.

"Hang on, you don't like licorice wands," James exclaimed, just remembering this small, insignificant detail. "These aren't the packets of licorice wands that were in the mixed boxes we got you for your birthday, were they?"

"May-be" Sirius said shyly, looking at his hands. He instantly felt two pillows making contact with his head.

"Are you done now?" he asked as he resurfaced, grabbing his bag of sherbet lemons and as he sat up plopped two into his mouth. James and Remus shrugged their shoulders and continued with their presents. Sirius popped the rest of the sherbet lemons into his mouth and grabbed the giant box of Bertie Botts Beans that was laying next to him on the bed, ripped off the top and began eating.

"James thanks!" Remus exclaimed as he pulled the rest of the wrapping and a big, old, heavy book fell into his lap "How did you know I wanted _An Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Charms_?"

James shrugged "I didn't. It was a big old book with large words so I thought you might like it," Things were still a bit awkward between Remus and James since the Hogsmeade trip that went bad a few days ago so Remus just nodded and continued with his presents. An hour later, the entire dormitory was covered in trash and the four boys sat around eating and admiring their gifts. Remus was already buried in the book James had given him and Sirius, Bob and James were having fun eating Animal Crackers (Cream coloured, vanilla flavoured thickly cut crackers in different animal shapes. Side effects: small pop and hey presto! You're an animal).

At 9:30, four hours after they had been woken up, Bob had told them he was hungry and began getting dressed to go down to breakfast. James got up too and upon hearing movement, Remus joined them in finding their belongings under all the wrapping paper rubbish. Sirius, who had been eating packet upon packet of sugary delicacies, was by some miracle also hungry and five minutes later all four boys exited the trashed room.

-:-

The sun was rising, causing it to reflect of the newly fallen sludge that could possibly pass as snow and into the eyes of one Miss Lily Evans. She groaned and turned onto her other side, her back now facing the window and found Jessica sitting up in bed, munching.

"Uh?" Lily asked, her brain to slow in the first few minutes in the morning to form sentences. She grinned.

"Its Christmas, couldn't resist. Sorry," she gave Lily a small apologetic gesture then motioned to something at the end of Lily's bed. Lily lifted her head a fraction and once spotting the outline of a sack at the end of her bed, she let her head fall back onto the pillow.

"Give me a minute," Lily mumbled to Jess before throwing the doona over her head. Two seconds later, her soft snores could be heard again. Jess looked at her watch and when the second hand returned back to the two, she threw her pillow at Lily. She made a stifling sound and stretched and threw the doona back off.

"Okay, I'm up," she told Jessica and reached over the end of her bed, grabbed the top of the sack and heaved it up onto the bed. Lily went through her sack of presents and Jess went back through hers, both commenting on the gifts they had received. Lily laughed when she opened her present from Sirius and found the small packet of licorice wands and saw on the back the 'Not For Separate Sale' written on the back.

"Look at what Felicity bought me," Jessica told Lily, screwing up her face as she reached down and pulled up a giant, clear case full to the brim with make-up. Lily couldn't help it, she laughed.

"It's not funny," Jessica pouted, returning the large case to the floor.

"Yes it is. I've never seen you wear any type of make-up," Lily told her "Have you ever worn make up before?"

"Of course I have!" She said defensively and Lily raised her eyebrow "Okay okay, I was three and I was my older sister's doll for the day because I lost at snap,"

"Hmm," Lily said, stifling another laugh and opened the packet of licorice wands "Felicity would've wanted to see your face,"

"Please don't wake her!" Jessica whispered, practically begging "She's been just awful the past few days. First I thought it was just a hangover but hangovers don't last three days..."

Lily turned her head to look over at Felicity, still sleeping and curled up in her doona. Since they returned to the castle three days ago, Felicity had refused to leave the sanctuary of their room, and biting everyone's head off whenever they spoke to her. Although Lily could not begin to understand the suffering her friend was going through, she could sympathize. Remus had obviously tipped her over the edge with his words and this was Felicity giving up hope.

"Yeah, but you have to understand what she's going through," Lily told Jessica as Felicity stifled and rolled over, burying herself deeper into her bed.

"I know, I know," Jessica mumbled, throwing up her hands in frustration and plopping another handful of beans into her mouth "but still, if it were me, I wouldn't be taking it out on my friends,"

"Yeah, but you're not Felicity," Lily pointed out and Jessica laughed "Yeah, thank god,"

"I reckon," Lily replied after unwrapping her present from Felicity, and holding it up to show Jessica who choked on her beans "I don't think I could handle having two friends giving me a matching pair of lacy underwear,"

"Hey, don't speak too soon, you haven't opened your present from Claudia yet,"

Placing the underwear back onto the wrapping paper and placing it to the side with the presents she'd already opened, she leanded over the end of her bed and searched for anything from Claudia. When she resurfaced, she had her hand tightly clutching a white envelope with a touch of pink.

"That's all?" Jessica asked her in surprise as she sat up. Lily ripped the envelope open and two pieces of parchment fell out. She picked up the one on top which had the scent of the Dior perfume and began reading the letter from Claudia

_Merry Christmas Lily!_

_I hope this letter finds you well and having a Happy Christmas. I hope that having to stay at Hogwarts over Christmas with only Hamon and Felicity isn't bringing you down. We'll be seeing each other tomorrow so just use that thought to get you through the day. Enclosed is a years subscription to _Witch Weekly_. I know you love to be on top of the goss and fashion and this way you can have a copy of your own, rather than borrowing week old ones from Felicity._

_Can't wait to see you tomorrow_

_Claudia xo_

The second piece of paper was the receipt from purchasing the years subscription, also informing her she will receive a free face mask as a gift for subscribing, valued at 13 sickles.

"Well, at least its better than lacy underwear," Jessica sympathized after reading the letter from Claudia once Lily threw it away "Now open mine!"

Lily leaned over the end of her bed yet again and picked up a present that was round and about the size of a soccer ball. As she lifted it up to her bed, it began quivering and Lily dropped it onto her bed in shock.

"It's okay," Jessica laughed as Lily gave her a look of pure shock "It's not going to hurt you, though I suggest you open it soon. You've already activated it,"

"Activated what?" Lily asked her, a hint of panic escaping into her voice. Jessica didn't answer; she just motioned to the round present. Lily picked it up again and rotated it around in her hands, wondering where to begin when her fingers brushed over the latch that, after a closer look, undid some kind of door. Lily slowly tried to undo the latch, which proved to be difficult as the ball shaped present was quivering quite violently at this stage. As soon as Lily pried the little latch open, her whole present exploded, showing the whole room in sweets. The explosion seemed to have shocked Felicity awake as she bolted up in her bed. Lily and Jessica instantly threw an apologetic smile in her direction, hoping today would be a new day. All hopes of this were crushed seconds later when a large, multi-coloured lollipop landed on top of Felicity's head, signaling the return of the scowl and she threw her doona over her head to stop the sweets from hitting her head.

"Hahaha thanks Jess, this is awesome!" Lily laughed as she threw her hands up into the air to catch the falling sweets.

"Oh, I know," Jessica told her, catching some sweets of her own. The sweets continued to fall, much to Felicity's distaste, and before long Lily realized she was hungry, despite the small mountains of sweets that had formed on the beds and all over the floor. Lily grabbed the clothes she had worn the previous night that hung at the end of her bed and headed to the bathroom. When she returned, Jess was already dressed and they left to go down to breakfast, though Jessica was pretty full from the sweets she had been snacking on all morning. When they arrived at the Great Hall, it seemed like the Marauders had only just made it down here before them as they were busy loading their plates full of delicacies.

"Merry Christmas Gentlemen," Lily greeted them as she and Jessica took their regular holiday spots next to James and Sirius.

"Morning Ladies, have a good morning?" James asked as they sat down, but before they had a chance to respond, Sirius demanded

"Why do you have Droobles and Pepper Imps in your hair?" Both girls laughed, Jessica shook her hair and Sirius watched in dismay as they fell to the floor whilst James brushed the sweets out of Lily's hair affectionately.

"Well?" Sirius demanded, obviously upset by the loss of the sweets.

"You weren't seriously going to eat them, were you?" Remus asked Sirius in a tone of disbelief. Sirius turned to the girls and demanded

"Do either of you have lice?" Lily and Jessica both shook their heads and Sirius turned back to Remus.

"Yes," he told him and the other four gagged; hairy imps, lovely. "So how come you have sweets in your hair," Sirius asked, going back to his original question.

"Ha, well, its kind of raining them in our room, thanks to Jess," Lily told them and Sirius deflated. Stupid, untrustworthy boys rule.

"So, are you going to the dinner feast tonight?" James asked Lily as Sirius began his sulk.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I?" Lily asked in surprise, they always went down to the dinner feast. She'd never stayed at Hogwarts over Christmas before but she couldn't see how it would be any different. Jessica swallowed the piece of toast she had been chewing.

"Haven't you ever stayed at Hogwarts over Christmas before?" she asked in surprise.

"Noo..." she said slowly, looking around at her friends waiting for someone to take pity on her and explain.

"On Christmas Day, the headmaster likes us to dress up," Sirius said grumpily, his chin resting on his folded arms which rested on the table.

"Which is exactly why I chose to be missing during the time of the feast," Jessica mumbled to Sirius who nodded his head in agreement.

"Define 'dress up'?" Lily asked her friends slowly, thinking if worst came to worst, she'd go do a Jessica.

"It's just wearing something nice, gives the girls a chance to let their hair down, buy a new frock and have fun walking in high heels," James told her soothingly, rolling his eyes in Jessica's direction as she shuddered.

"And for the boys? What do they get out of this?" Lily asked James curiously as she loaded her plate with food.

"Why, we get to admire the view of course," he said, winking "So are you up for it?"

"I don't know..." said Lily slowly, delaying her answer by sipping her pumpkin juice "I don't have a new frock,"

"I'm sure Felicity would lend you one," Jessica told her, nearly making Remus chock on his croissant and causing Sirius to lean over and thump him on the back. This gave Lily an idea.

"James, if you'll be my date, I would love to go to the feast with you," She said, turning to James who, upon seeing the little sparkle in her eye replied "It would be my pleasure,"

"Jess," the red head said as she turned from James to face her friend "Come on, lets go pick out our dresses for tonight," she said, standing up, this time actually causing the person in question to choke on the item of food they had been eating at that point in time.

"Our dresses?" she spluttered once she had swallowed enough food to be able to breathe.

"Yes," Lily told her impatiently, grabbing her friend under the arm and pulling her to her feet, then steering her out of the hall. Once up the marble staircase and at safe yelling distance, Jess cried

"Are you purposely trying to ruin my Christmas?"

"No," Lily said shortly, "I'm trying to make Felicity's one better," dropping Jessica's arm as she said so. Jessica continued to stare blankly at Lily as they walked along the corridor. In the end she sighed

"Okay, I give up. In English?"

"Felicity needs to get out, either to begin to get over him or seriously commit to wanting to win him. Right now, she's a mess and if we keep letting her go on like this she'll do it during term as well. If we get her into a nice dress, do her hair nice etc. etc. boys will ask her to dance and it will give her a chance to forget her worries, and we can watch Remus to see if he even gets a little jealous. And I can't do this all by myself, so will you please help me?" Lily asked her as they stopped in front of the Pink Lady. Jessica sighed in resignation and Lily grinned.

-:-

Upon entering the dormitory room, it was clear that the room was still raining sweets.

"How long did you say this was going to last?" Lily asked her as she sized the room up, planning her best chance to walk through the mounds that covered the floor.

"Dunno," Jessica answered her, "I didn't exactly read the instructions. The store had me at the title 'Raining Sweets',". Lily made her way across the room to the bed still occupied by Felicity, grabbing the doona and yanking it off Felicity, the mound of sweets falling instantly onto the floor. Felicity grumbled and rolled over so her back was facing Lily.

"Felicity," Lily said, her voice filled with authority "You have to get up,"

"Says who?" she snapped, curling up into the fetus position.

"Me," Lily said "And I second that motion," Jessica called from across the room where she was still trying to plow her way across.

"Well, I don't want to," she told them stropilly and pulled her pillow down over her head. Well, Lily thought, she asked for it.

'Levicorpus' Lily thought, pointing her wand at Felicity and watched as her friend shrieked as she was hoisted up by the ankle by some invisible piece of rope.

"LET! ME! DOWN!" she screeched, struggling against the invisible force that was holding her life in its hands.

"Nah, I'm good thanks," Lily said, sitting down on Felicity's bed and looking up at her.

"Lily Evans, you let me down this minute!" she demanded, her face turning red from anger. Or perhaps it was due to her blood pressure since she was upside down?

"Or what? You'll hang around all day?" Jessica mocked from the space she had cleared of sweets from her bed.

"Look Felicity, we're not going to sit here and watch you ruin your life because of some guy. You are going to get up, get out and get on with your life,"

"But I don't want to! I want HIM!" she whined, instantly ceasing to struggle as she felt her eyes well up with tears.

"Well, you have a funny way of showing it," Lily told her sternly "Do you reckon Remus would go for a girl who, on Christmas Day, is up in her room crying, or a girl out there having fun on what is supposed to be the best day of the year?"

"The second one?" Felicity guessed, hiccupping as she looked at Lily to see if her response was correct.

"Yes, he would go for the girl having fun and right now that's Claudia. So tonight we're goin to put on some nice dresses, do our hair in something other than a pony tail and have fun, okay? And maybe if you have fun tonight, you could just relax and let everyone see the real you," Lily told the dangling girl.

"Fine," Felicity grumbled, folding her arms "NOW can you let me down?" Lily did the counter charm and Felicity fell back onto her bed, right on top of the newly fallen sweets.

"Can you stop it already?" Felicity snapped as she sat up, rubbing her back. Jessica picked up the remains of the ball shaped present and threw it out into the corridor. The raining instantly stopped in their room and Lily heard the sound of the sweets landing on the stone in the hallway. She grinned as she had another idea.

-:-

"Okay, nearly there," Lily told Sirius, holding her hands over his eyes as they climbed up the stairs to the boy's dormitory.

"Aww, come on Lily, tell me! You know I only like surprises if I know what they are,"

"Yes, which then defeats the purpose of the entire purpose," Lily told him as they reached the landing. She led him three steps into the room before stopping.

"Ready?" Lily asked the boy who nodded. Lily dropped her hands and watched him as his face totally lit up, then ran the length of the room and dove onto his bed, which by now was covered by a good inch of sweets.

"This is the best Christmas EVER!" he yelled and proceeded to make snow angels on his bed. Lily laughed as she watched him enjoy himself. He stopped suddenly, as if he only now remembered her being there in the room and sat up facing her. His face dropped.

"What do you want?" he demanded, sizing Lily up and down.

"A favour, that can be asked anytime,"

"A big favour?" he asked, groaning at the very thought

"On your part, no," Lily told him and he yelled "Yippee!" and opened his mouth in welcome for the falling sweets. Lily laughed at her friend again before exiting the dorm room, carefully shutting the door behind her and making her way back to the common room. Just as she turned to head back up the girl's staircase, she heard someone call her name and found herself face to face with James Potter.

"Do you want to have a snowball fight after lunch? You and me vs. Remus and Sirius, what do you say?"

"I think Sirius is rather indisposed right now, I don't think he'll be coming. If you wait a minute, I'll go see if Jessica wants to play," Lily told him before climbing the stairs two at a time and entering the room. Jessica was busy, broom in hand, making a pathway around each of the beds to make them accessible.

"Hey Jess, you wanna join the snowball fight James is organizing after lunch?" Lily asked her friend, making her way along the newly created pathway to her bed to retrieve her coat, scarf and gloves.

"Sure, though we should probably tell Felicity where we're going," she replied, abandoning the broom and fetching her own coat and gloves.

"Where is she?" the red head asked, noticing the brunette wasn't in the room with them.

"I forced her into the bathroom, she should be out soon. She's been in there ever since you left," she told Lily and sure enough, minutes later, Felicity surfaced from the bathroom, towel around her torso and another around her head.

"Felicity, we're goin g to join the boys outside to have a snowball fight. Do you want to come watch?" Lily asked her gently as she made her way over to her bed on the newly made pathway.

"No," she sniffed "I'll stay here,"

"Okay," Lily said "But if I find you in bed when we come back up to get ready, you'll wish your head never touched that pillow, kapesh?" Felicity nodded.

-:-

Hours later, Jessica and Lily returned to their dormitory, soaked to the skin and covered in sludge. Happy finding Felicity sitting on her bed reading, Lily went and took a long, hot shower. When she returned back to the room, she found Felicity and Jessica in the middle of a heated argument.

"Over my dead body!" Jessica was yelling as Lily slipped on her bathrobe "No way, nuh uh, wrong number, not doing it, no way, no how! I refuse to wear pink!"

"Its not pink, its pastel and you'll look really good in it. It would complement your skin tone and highlight your chocolate brown hair!"

"I don't give a damn about my skin tone! The fact is that dress is PINK, and I refuse to wear it. It has frills for god's sake!"

"Felicity," Lily asked the girl before she had the chance to respond. She had seen the dress and she wouldn't be caught dead wearing it and didn't want to force Jessica to either, after all she had begrudgingly accepted to come "If you didn't own this dress, what dress would you recommend?"

"Well, how could I not own this dress? It was rated at number four on the must have list by Witch Weekly but, if you insist," she dropped the pink, or 'pastel' dress on the bed and walked over to her trunk and pulled out an aqua green, sleeveless, knee length dress. It was rather high cut with the straps meeting in the middle of the dress, near the bust line and went out on an angle and on to the shoulders. Lily couldn't believe it, this dress had Jess written all over it, and Lily thought she'd never see the day when a dress was actually calling to Jessica to be worn. Even Jessica was dumb struck, staring at the dress hanging on a coat hanger that Felicity was holding up in mid air, tapping her foot with impatience for a reaction.

"Wow. That dress isn't ... half bad," Jessica told her, walking across the room and taking the coat hanger from Felicity and holding it against her body.

"Yeah, I can actually see you wearing that," Lily told her before Jessica headed to the bathroom to try it on. Although the girls were different shapes, Felicity being a stick with small speed bumps, Lily being flat but with definite boobage and Jessica who was a little flatter than Jessica but with a waist, the dress seemed to fit her pretty well. She came out the bathroom moments later, she was never the type of girl to take ten minutes to get changed when it really only involved pulling off jeans, throwing the tee-shirt over her head, unzipping the dress and throwing it over her head and zipping herself back up.

"So the truth. How horrible to I look in this dress?" she demanded when she returned, turning slowly in a circle.

"You know that's insulting. Of course you look good, I wouldn't have bought the dress if it didn't look good," Felicity snapped, walking over to her and brushing the dress down. The dress reached just above the knees, since she was a little taller and had curves to fit in, which surprised Lily as she had always assumed her to be a brick with her baggy shirts and cargo pants.

"It's not too over the top?" she demanded to Lily, not trusting Felicity's opinion as she would never say anything bad about any item of her wardrobe.

"No, it's just like a sundress. Loose and very flattering," Lily told her, nodding as Felicity finished brushing the white fluff from the dress. She then walked over to her trunk and pulled out a large leather bag and pulled out a pair of dangerously high heels. Jess's jaw nearly reached the floor.

"Are you serious? It said 'nice dress' on the notice board not bloody formal wear! Those shoes are just plain dangerous!"

"Hmmph these shoes ARE nice and are just begging to be worn," she informed her and Jessica rolled her eyes.

"I am a girl who lives in converse. I won't be able to walk in those!" she complained, shooting Lily a begging look from behind Felicity's back. Lily sighed and dug around in her trunk, finding the one at first and then a small amount of digging later she retrieved the second one. She threw the pair at Jessica who caught both of them, though slightly surprised when she found herself holding a pair of silver, ballet flats.

"They're the same colour as those ones aren't they?" Lily asked Felicity, gesturing to the pair of strappy, silver shoes she still held in her hand. Felicity nodded and then dropped the pair of shoes back in the bag and then went back to her trunk to find a dress for Lily. She sighed, deciding it was probably best that she wore whatever was picked out for her, she had already weaseled Jessica wearing what was picked out for her and she could tell that Felicity was cut. She was surprised though when Felicity pulled out the dress she had decided upon for Lily. It too was sleeveless, but it had rather thick straps that went across her chest and met in the middle, just below the bust line. The dress itself was black but to avoid cleavage being shown, there was a strip of white material going across, joining the two thick straps together. The rest of the dress was black and holding it up to her body, it reached her knees. Felicity nodded her head in approval.

"Yes, I think that's the one. The black is a wonderful contrast with your red hair and it really brings out your green eyes. Now, hurry up, off you go," she said, shooing Lily into the bathroom to change. Lily came out moments later in the dress, with two white sashes hanging down on each side.

"I couldn't tie a bow behind my back," Lily told her sheepishly and turned around for Felicity to do up. She shook her head.

"No no, the tie is supposed to be on the side of your front," she tutted to Lily, moving forward to see what else Lily had done wrong.

"Come again?" Lily asked her, _the side of your front?_ What sort of instructions were they?

"Here," Felicity said, grabbing the two sashes and tying a knot on the left side of Lily's dress, right near the seam. Oh, the side of the front ...

"Let me guess, you don't want to wear heels either?" She asked Lily, guessing her very thoughts. Lily nodded sheepishly. Felicity sighed and dug inside her bag and pulled out a pair of black Mary Jane shoes, black with the strap across the foot. Lily lifted her leg and placed it on top of the other whilst she tried to put the shoe on. Her foot made it three quarters of the way in before getting stuck. Lily pushed it in further, but the shoe, or her foot, wouldn't budge.

"Uh Felicity, the shoe doesn't fit," Lily sung out to her friend who was busy, head inside the trunk, looking for something she could wear.

"Just make it bigger," the muffled sound replied, pointing her wand at the shoes as she surfaced and said "Engorgio". The shoe instantly became larger and Lily felt her foot slip into the shoe easily "Claudia and I are different shoe sizes so we would just enlarge or shrink each others shoes," she told her and Lily could see water about to leak from her eyes.

"No no Felicity, don't cry. Come on, which dress are you going to wear tonight?" Lily asked, a little more enthusiastic than necessary. Even Jessica, who was sitting cross legged on her bed barefoot, the silver flats still on the floor, was even trying to show as much enthusiasm she could manage. Felicity smiled and sniffled and pulled her dress from the trunk. It was short, and strapless and bright pink with small, white polka dots all over it and a white sash around the waist. It had a little tulle under the skirt so it sort of stuck out, rather than hugging her figure. It was really cute, and totally Felicity. In one swift movement, Jessica and Lily both moved from their beds, over to Felicity and pushed her into the bathroom to try it on. She, of course, took longer than both Jessica and Lily did to get dressed but she soon came out and did a little twirl, causing the skirt to fly out.

"Wow, Felicity! You look really good!" Jessica said in disbelief when she finished twirling around for them to see.

"Why the tone of surprise?" she asked Jessica, whose cheeks turned a light pink "Are you sure I look okay?"

"You look more than okay Fe, you look great," Lily told her sincerely making her friend smile. She looked down at her silver wrist watch to check how long they had left.

"How long?" Jessica asked her, reseating herself on her bed, the shoes still remaining on the floor.

"Its five o'clock" she told them and Jessica smiled "Excellent. Plenty of time. Exploding snap anyone?"

-:-

"James, why are we here? You know, just one more time," Sirius asked impatiently as they stood around in the common room. Sirius had his hands shuffed inside his jacket pocket that he wore on top of his white shirt and jeans. He claimed that adding the jacket on top of his everyday gear classified it as nice, for he never wore those formal styled jackets. James didn't care, he was wearing the same sort of thing really. Though he decided to do something nice for the headmaster and leave his jeans in his dorm, he was wearing brown corduroy pants instead with a navy tee and a brown jacket on top. Sirius had lent him the jacket, he had rather a large collection. Remus was sitting in the arm chair in front of the fire, reading a day old copy of the Prophet.

"Because I said I would accompany her to dinner and it is gentleman like to wait for her and go together and since us three guys and those three girls are the only Gryffindors left over the holidays as everyone was desperate to return home, I thought it would make sense that we all went down together," James told him as Sirius continued to sway, backwards and forwards with his hands still in his pockets.

"Wish they'd hurry up," Sirius complained, ceasing to sway and instead walking over to where Remus was sitting and leaning against the arm of the chair.

"Its quarter to seven and the feast starts at seven. They're not exactly late are they?" James told his friend and continued to stand in the middle of the common room, in front of the staircase.

"Still," Sirius retorted "Girls take forever to get ready,"

"Actually, we just didn't want Jessica to win Exploding Snap, again," said a voice from the staircase and all boys looked up to watch the three girls descending. Lily was in front, wearing a black dress which seemed to have a low neck line but to Sirius's disappoint there was white material there. Her red hair rested on her shoulders, almost flicking up at the end as it was too long to just hang there. James couldn't help but staring at her and only looked away when he noticed she noticed that he was staring and she blushed. Felicity was right behind Lily and she was making it her mission to stay as close to Lily as possible, even though Remus was safely at the other end of the room. Felicity was making it in her best interest to avoid looking at him at all cost, though Remus didn't extend the same courtesy, unable to look away from the mousy brown haired girl, her hair reaching just above her waist and was wavy and her strapless pink and white polka dot dress complemented her long legs. Lily and Felicity stood their sheepishly for a while and the boys stared between the two girls and the staircase, wondering what happened to the third.

"I've changed my mind," yelled a voice down the stairs "I'm not coming down,"

"Oh hurry up Jessica, I'm starving and I don't have time for you to try on all your different colours of lip gloss to see which one matches your dress the best," Sirius yelled back, sufficiently irritated, like most males are when they're hungry. Lily shot James an apologetic smile before hurriedly climbing back up the stairs. Lily found Jessica sitting on her bed, legs crossed and the silver flat shoes back down on the floor.

"You're coming down to the feast, whether you like it or not," Lily told her, picking up the shoes and handing them back to her.

"No, they'll laugh at me. I mean, I'm wearing a dress for goodness sake! Me, Jessica! I'm wearing a fricken dress! I may as well have a big yellow neon arrow pointing to me saying FREAK!"

"Do you want me to do to you what I did to Felicity?" Lily threatened, shaking the shoes in front of Jessica's face.

"Meh, hanging upside down beats social embarresment," Lily sighed, dropping the shoes next to Jessica on the bed.

"Let me rephrase. Do you want me to hang you upside down and then levitate you downstairs, threw the corridors, down the staircases and into the Great Hall? And may I remind you you're wearing a dress?" Lily threatened pointing at the shoes. Jessica just stared at her blankly so Lily shrugged and took her wand from where the sash around her waist was holding it and raised it. Then Jessica decided to move. Quick as lightning she bolted up out of bed. Lily smiled.

"There we go, that wasn't so hard was it?" Lily asked her sweetly, placing her wand back safely in the sash and walked towards the door.

"Hang on a sec," Jessica called and Lily turned to find her friend digging through her trunk. She raised her eyebrow in confusion.

"What are you doing?" Lily asked her puzzled, staring at her friend who was throwing her possessions from her trunk around the room as she continued to dig down. She suddenly pulled up, her fist clutching around what seemed to be a piece of black licra.

"This," she said, bending over and stepping into the wholes of the material which Lily finally recognized as a pair of short bike pants. She pulled them up, under her dress and over her orange underwear and then dropped the dress back on top. No one would have guessed they were there.

"Why?" Lily asked her suspiciously as Jessica hopped on one foot to get the shoe on her foot, then on the other.

"Just in case I don't look like I'm enjoying myself during dinner and you decide to follow through with your threat," she told Lily, both shoes now on her feet and she hurried past Lily and down the stairs, Lily following closely at the stairs. When Lily reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and watched Jessica as she continued full pace up to Sirius and slapped him across the face. Five pairs of eyes stared wide eyed at her in surprise.

"That's for even thinking that I'm shallow enough to own several shades of lip gloss and giving a damn about which one looks best with this dress," Jessica snapped, grabbing Felicity's arm from where she had been standing, a meter away from the boys and the two of the girls exited the common room together, though Felicity was half dragged.

"Well," Lily said when she suddenly found herself alone in the common room with her three old friends.

"Shall we?" James asked her, holding out his arm for Lily, who slipped her arm through his and the four of them exited the common room after the two girls, who could be seen walking together, this time at a slower pace at the end of the corridor.

"You know what? I never noticed but Jessica's ass actually sways side to side when she walked," Sirius said absentmindedly, causing the other three to all look to their left with the same mirrored expression on their faces.

"What?" he said defensively "It was seriously shaking from side to side when she stalked away from me!"

"Yeah, after she slapped you," Remus sniggered and Sirius thumped him.

"Yes, an incident we shall not ever discuss again as it will hurt my manhood," Sirius said simply and Remus muttered "What manhood?"

"Well, I saw you admiring the young Miss Felicity. Saw something you liked?" Sirius striked back, instantly causing Remus's smile to drop. The four of them climbed down the marble staircase in silence, meeting Felicity and Jessica at the bottom of the stairs where they had paused to wait for them.

Sirius shot Jessica a smile which she returned back with a glare. Sirius took a step back and pulled Remus's shoulder in front of him, making Remus roll his eyes. Together, the six of them walked towards the Great Hall and through the doors. All four tables were pushed against the wall, one on top of the other, two on each wall. Instead, in the middle of the hall was a rather large, circular table with a white table cloth and with a quick calculation Lily counted seventeen place settings.

Apparently they weren't the first ones there. Professor Dumbledore sat directly opposite the doors with Professors McGonagall and Slughorn on his left and right. Professor Sprout was in a deep conversation with Slughorn who she was sitting next too with Flitwick, who was next to McGonagall, stared at the six Gryffindors. On the other side of Professor Sprout were three, giggly Hufflepuff third years, which Lily didn't find surprising them sitting there. After all, she was there head of house.

On Professor Flitwick's other side were also three students, this time Ravenclaws. Two boys looked like they were in their 6th year, one Lily noticed was a prefect and the third was a girl in what she would guess as her forth. The girl and the boy sitting next to the prefect looked quite alike in facial figures and Lily assumed that they were brother and sister. Between the last Hufflepuff and the Ravenclaw girl were seven seats which the six Gryffindors spread out in, leaving the spare seat next to the third year Hufflepuff as no one felt like sitting next to the gigglers. Once they were all seated and returned the greetings from the professors the clock in the Entrance Hall chimed 7 o'clock.

"Well," Dumbledore announced "There's no point in letting the food get cold. I'm sure Magescum will come down if he's hungry. Dig in," That was all Sirius needed. He reached right into the middle of the table for the plate full of roast potatoes and began loading his plate full of them. All three Gryffindor females and the girl from Ravenclaw looked on with looks of disgust. Apart from that, dinner was quite enjoyable. The students and teachers alike had fun with the Christmas Crackers that each person found on their bread and butter plate and once pulled the two persons were bombarded with confetti and either a witches or wizards hat sprung on top of either person's head. Dinner was nearly over when Dumbledore clapped his hands.

"Ah Magescum, nice of you to join us. Where you hungry?" The six Gryffindors who all had their back to the entrance, turned in their seats to see the new arrival. Magescum Shiverfreeze was a seventh year Slytherin and played Keeper on the Slytherin Quidditch Team.

"Couldn't find the kitchen" the Slytherin mumbled, looking livid when he realized that the only seat was next to a third year Hufflepuff. The boys couldn't help but snort into their plates when he sat down and all three Hufflepuffs turned to face him before turning back to face each other and burst into a fit of giggles. Magescum glowered and grabbed a dinner from the bowl in front of him and began tearing at it. Every so often, people would place their knifes and forks on their plate, signaling they were finished with their meal. Before long it was only Sirius and Dumbledore still eating, though Dumbledore could have been excused as he was quite old, but mainly because he was supplying most of the conversation between the students of different houses. Sirius was just a pig. Sliding his knife and fork onto his plate, and knowing Sirius too well to know he wasn't going to finish any time soon he declared.

"How about some dancing? Wear off some of that Christmas Feast before settling into pudding," taking out his wand and causing the table, all the chairs and the people onto the chairs to levitate and he slowly moved them across the hall to the right causing the occupants onto the chair to clutch to the side from fear of falling off. Dumbledore placed them down a little way away, making room for dancing. Lily's ears then tuned in to the sound of some kind of semi up tempo music, playing from somewhere she couldn't see. Dumbledore stood up and offered his arm to Professor Sprout, who accepted graciously and lead her to the dance floor.

"You wanna dance?" Lily heard someone whisper in her ear and she felt a hand snake behind her back and behind her waist. Lily looked up at James and felt herself holding in the urge to snort. James continued to look at her questioningly and Lily felt her face fall when she realized he was serious.

"Uh, um, er James... I can't dance," she stammered and to her surprise she saw James face break into a rather large grin.

"Doesn't matter. I can," he laughed, pulling her to her feet and leading her towards the dance floor. As it turned out, James was a dangerous dancer. Lily was holding onto James, her hands tied behind the base of his neck as James steered and spun around the dance floor. She nearly toppled over poor Professor Flitwick who was dancing a fair distance behind her with Professor McGonagall. But thankfully, after that particular piece of music cease to play, a softer, sweeter piece of music began to play, reminding Lily of a lullaby and James had no choice but to sway to and fro around in a circle but truthfully, he didn't mind. He didn't mind at all.

-:-

Remus was sitting at the dinner table, feeling alone, just how it almost always was for him. James was dancing with Lily, the Ravenclaw prefect had asked a very surprised Felicity to dance and Remus couldn't help noticing she blushed as pink as her dress when she accepted. The other Ravenclaw sixth year had asked one of the giggly Hufflepuffs to dance, though Remus was sure he had regretted the decision as soon as he asked, leaving her two friends to gush over the 16 year old and quiz the pair's compatibility.

Even Sirius had left him. When McGonagall had left to dance with Professor Flitwick, she had sent the food back down to the kitchen, turning a deaf ear to Sirius when he complained he hadn't finished. Dumbledore had conjured a table full of plastic cups surrounded by a bowl of punch, located conveniently next to the dance floor obviously for the use of the dances to take a drink between songs and Sirius had walked over to 'taste test'. Remus knew of no rule or statement that acknowledged that drinking half a punch bowl classified as taste testing which left Remus to stare around the edges of the blank white table at the people who surrounded him.

Jessica had left, claiming the need for the bathroom and so the Slytherin Magescum in the company of the Hufflepuff. She seemed to have got the message to leave him alone; his body language practically shouted it and she had turned back to her friend and were currently discussing the pros and cons of their friend dating this sixth year. Two seats along, Professor Slughorn was busy smuggling one crystallized pineapple out of the packet in the pocket of his robes, though to no avail. If the specs of sugar in his mustache weren't obvious, the sound of the plastic crackling was a dead give away. The rest of the teachers were dancing leaving the Ravenclaw fourth year staring off into space.

Remus watched as Slughorn discovered he had no more pineapple left, thank goodness, the noise was beginning to irritate him, and watched him stand up and walk into the middle of the dance floor and tap tiny Professor Flitwick on the shoulder and ask to cut in. He accepted graciously, handing him McGonagall and made his way back to the table and took his old seat next to the Ravenclaw. Remus soon found himself staring out the window of the hall, out into the darkness lit with stars and looked out across the Hogwarts ground. He turned back in time to hear the Ravenclaw girl ask Professor Flitwick

"And I know you said it was rather advanced, but I tried but I think I've nearly got the Bedazzling Charm but the thing is it is temperamental. I mean, one moment I'll be invisible under a sheet I charmed and then next minute I'm there again. I know Bedazzling charms wear off after time but surely not that quickly," she was saying to the professor who seemed to be deep in thought. Remus looked at the girl in surprise. A Bedazzling charm, that was at least OWL level, maybe it was 6th year material. This really took him for surprise, it had taken him ages to finally getting the Bedazzling charm right and she was already up to setting the time. He continued to watch the girl with dark copper hair as the Professor explained the details for setting the period of time for the charm to hold for.

"Watcha looking at?" Sirius slurred as he slumped down in his seat, slightly swaying, obviously suffering from being punch drunk.

"Nothing," Remus told him, turning to face the slightly red Sirius "Nothing at all,"

_**A/N:OMG LOVE YOU! Haha thanks to everyone who contributed to the 187, for those who asked, there was no specific reason for asking for that number. This chapter originally was planned to be two but I just couldn't stop writing and Grey Mustang would have thrown a fit if I didn't post it as one and I figured I would give it too you guys as like a birthday treat :D so a BIG BIG thanks to all that reviewed and if I don't hit 200 reviews for this chapter, since it consisted of 20 pages and 8,500 words, I will know if you guys truly love me back.**_

**_All those interested, on my profile i've posted weblinks to the dresses which I found for the girl's to wear, I think i had a LITTLE too much fun with it, but rock on over there and check em out._**

_**IMPORTANT:Not intending to be dramatic, which I guess is quite easy for a writer, but my world has literally just been tipped on its head and I don't know how this is going to affect my writing. I will either get massive writers block or bury myself in my writing. Will let you know, and I have now officially figured out how the story ends, which I probably should have done before I began, but now it is all in my head but I will let you know how it goes. You guys rock!**_


	14. Click, I Dare You

Yep, so I've finally updated: Click the arrow button -


	15. Out of the Closet

_Disclaimer: Don't own anything _

Chapter 14: Out of the Closet

It was five o clock on Boxing Day and it seemed that Lily and Jessica were about to go through what they had done yesterday with Felicity as they watched her dig through her trunk and pull out possible outfits. Not that Lily had told her specifically where they were going, there was no way in hell that Felicity would even consider coming if she knew they were going to Claudia's Boxing Bash. She had a fair idea that Jessica knew where they were actually going but she was putting on a brave face.

"I've been looking for this dress for ages!" Felicity exclaimed pulling out a dress that had white straps and a white neckline but was a rusty orange everywhere else. Jessica was already sending the pleading signals in Lily's direction.

"Yes, I think I will wear this dress tonight, to celebrate the finding of it," Felicity said to herself and placed the dress neatly on her bed. Jessica sighed with relief.

"Now Jess, I know you like pants but there is no way I'm allowing you into a party wearing jeans," Felicity was saying as she continued to dig through her trunk, which Lily suspected was bigger on the inside, with a purpose "However I have the perfect pair of pants in mind,"

"You own a pair of pants?" Jessica asked her in disbelief.

"Of course I do," Felicity sighed in exasperation "They are going to be huge this summer," She pulled out a pair of white pants which Lily assumed had a high waist with two white straps to go over the shoulder that were attached to the front and back of the pants. "I would say ... definitely a black shirt with this for you," she told Jessica and passed her the pants and a black top she had discarded earlier.

"Thanks?" Jessica said, thinking that something bad must be coming her way. Felicity never approved of her wearing shorts. She took her items into the adjoining bathroom to get changed. Lily continued watching Felicity sift through her belongings, knowing the next thing she pulled out she would be wearing.

She pulled out to Lily's surprise a pair of black jeans that reached just below the knee and looked like they had been folded back but were sown in place. She then pulled out a white top that had a low neck line in a v like structure, with the thick straps and the 'neck' line being black and covered with all these metal like squares that reflected in the light.

"Here you go," Felicity told her and Lily took the clothes graciously. She didn't want Jess exclaiming why she couldn't have worn the jeans. As soon as Jess exited the bathroom Lily walked right past her and inside to get changed.

When Lily returned to the room, the other two were fully dressed and Felicity was just adding a white belt around her waist.

"So how are we getting there?" Felicity asked as they all exited their room and climbed down the stairs.

"Floo powder. Through the Gryffindor fire place," Lily told her as they reached the bottom of the stairs and she crossed the common room towards the fire place with a purpose. She picked up the terracotta pot that was on top of the fireplace and held it out to her two friends. They took a handful each. Lily took her handful as well before placing the pot back where it belonged. The three of them ducked their heads and entered the fireplace, with Lily in the middle.

"Now I want you two to link arms with me," She told her friends who did so obediently "And now cover your ears,"

They did this too. Lily didn't want Felicity hearing their destination and flipping out and ending up in some foreign fireplace. With her spare hand, Lily counted down using her fingers from three before saying the mysterious destination clearly and the three of them dropped their powder simultaneously.

Lily and the others began spinning in the system of fireplaces but before long Lily felt them slow down and their feet landed on a small pile of ash. Arms still hooked, Lily pulled the other two out of the fireplace and into the room beyond and gasped.

They had come through a fireplace that appeared to be in the house's front foyer as straight ahead was a large, curved staircase with a handrail that looked to be made of gold and the stairs made from a light marble. The roof was quite high with a trim all around the edges with patterns weaving all over. There were quite a lot of small shrubs in pot plants in the front hall and a few pillars that seemed to make a arches into the room off the foyer which looked similar to a formal lounge room, though more formal that one Lily had seen before.

"Can we open our eyes now?" Jess grumbled. By her tone she had already peeked and obviously figured out where they were.

"Yes,"

Felicity and Jess opened their eyes and Jess's widened in awe at the scale of the room, whilst Felicity's widened with realisation and horror.

"Oh no," she cried and spun around to escape back through the fire place, however Lily had been expecting this reaction and had formed a firm grip on the girl who tried to release herself, however to no avail.

"Let. Me. Go," Felicity snapped, wiggling her arm from Lily's.

"No Fe. The way to bring the enemy down is within the system itself. Besides, Claudia can barely see past the end of her own nose, I doubt she'd recognise you with your new appearance," Lily reassured her and Felicity ceased to squirm.

"So we're not just here to have a good time?" she asked Lily who shook her head.

"How would this be considered a good time if we were just here to party? The fun starts with the bringing down,"

A gust of wind startled them as they turned around to see that more people were arriving behind them and so they hastily made their way over to the side of the foyer so they wouldn't hold up the incoming traffic.

Ten minutes later there were at least forty people standing around in Claudia's front foyer waiting for, well, god knows what they were waiting for.

"Hey Lily!" she turned at the sound of her name and found James making his way through the crowd, a bouncing Sirius beside him and a disgruntled Remus dragging along after.

"Hey," Lily greeted as James came to a stop next her.

"So you're all still here then. No escapees?" he joked and Lily smiled.

"Oh they tried," she said, grinning at her friends which was when she realised that the other four members of their party were standing around awkwardly next to each other which made Lily feel a little guilty.

"So Sirius, how are you enjoying those sweets?" Lily asked him innocently but it was Remus who replied

"They're a bloody nightmare! Can't get to sleep because heavy things keep landing on you! Sirius is the only one who is still being amused,"

"How could I not continue to be amused? How could you not be amused? It is raining fricken sugar in our room! Do you know how long I'd dreamed for this to happen? Since before I could remember so stop ruining my fun," Sirius growled at him and Remus rolled his eyes.

"Are you serious?" Jess asked him "Was that look supposed to look ... frightening?"

"No I was supposed to look so terrified that it would take you months before you were able to fall asleep at night in your dark and quiet room,"

"Ah huh. Well, hate to break it to you sunshine but that ain't 'terrifying'," Jess snickered and Sirius had a sudden impulse to protect his dignity.

"Well I'll just come and visit you tonight while your asleep and we'll see how well you fare when I'm standing over you in the darkness," Jessica laughed.

"Yeah, and how exactly do you plan to get into our dormitory? Not by the stairs surely,"

"No my dear friend, the window. You see, me, being Sirius Black, happen to be quite good at flying, thus the reason I'm on the Quidditch team and so as to be on the team I must possess ownership on a broomstick which I could quite easily fly from our window, around the other side of the tower and into your window,"

Jessica's face dropped instantly. Sirius felt his pride was fully protected.

After that, conversation broke out between Felicity and Jessica about how disastrous this party was going to be and an argument ignited between Remus and Sirius when they got back on topic about the raining sweets.

"What is it?" James's voice broke into Lily's thoughts.

"Sorry, what?"

"You have that look you have on your face whenever you're in deep concentration. So whatcha thinking about?"

"Them," Lily replied, indicating in the direction of Remus and Felicity, who although they were actually standing next to each other they had their backs away from each other so they could continue their conversation with another member of the party.

"Planning?" James guessed and Lily shook her head.

"No, for once I'm not planning, or scheming or plotting. I'm just genuinely thinking about them. Thinking about them as a couple,"

James tilted his head to the right.

"Well, if you look at them from this angle you can't really see them as a couple, however-" he tilted his head to the left "You can see them as a couple from this angle,"

"Yeah but I was just thinking, can you see them as a couple the right way up?"

"What do you-" his question was cut short when the lights in the foyer were shut off. A few of the girls let out a small squeal or a scream before a spotlight illuminated to the top of the staircase to reveal Claudia standing up at the top of the staircase in some ridiculous pose which Lily thought must be her trying to be 'sexy'. She had a short, champaign coloured halter neck dress on with a pair of gold and white heels that had the top cut so that you could see her toes.

Slowly and gracefully, she made her way down the stairs to some music that just happen to begin playing. Lily had to stop herself from laughing; this whole charade looked rehearsed, she wondered how many times she would have climbed up and down the stairs to make her ascend into society as elegantly and beautifully as possible.

Looking around at the other people who filled up the hallway, Lily noted more than one person was sneaking a look at their watch on the wrist and Lily couldn't blame them. Most people here wanted the loud music and the disco lights to start playing, not having to watch the host take an hour to make it from the first story to the ground floor to music that was so soothing it was like a lullaby and to prove her point, Jessica started to yawn.

As soon as both her white and gold heels touched the ground floor, the room again went dark and was illuminated seconds later with a pathway of lights leading away from the foyer. The students instantly began to move, at quite a fast pace in case they had to endure another entrance. James grabbed Lily's hand to stop them being separated and Felicity clung to Lily's other hand, not wanting to be left alone.

"Oh no you don't!" Sirius growled and grabbed Jessica around the middle and lifted her up and turned her to face the right direction before setting her down "If I have to suffer through this, so do you,"

"Pfft this isn't suffering for you. It's just a matter of time until the alcohol comes out and the girls will be stripping off like crazy," Sirius shrugged.

"True, but I'll be suffering till then so I've chosen you to be my buddy," he announced gleefully and pulled her into the swum of students and they soon got swallowed. When the corridor ended, Lily found herself inside a large, open space. Well, she would have thought it was large and open but there were so many people in here that it was hard to tell.

The lights that they had followed into the open space now dimmed and turned off and bright, flashing and revolving lights took its place on the roof above them. Then the music started. At first Lily had no idea what was playing, it was just very very loud noise, but then under all those loud pounding beats she recognised a familiar song by Pink Floyd.

"Come on buddy! We're dancing!" Sirius exclaimed, his hand in an iron grip with Jess's and was pulling her into the middle of the dancing arena.

"Oh no! We Are Not! I am not dancing with you and you're two left feet!" she yelled to be heard over the music, digging her heels into the ground and pulling hard to get her hand free. Lily, James, Felicity and Remus found themselves being pushed back by the amount of people heading to the dance floor that they found themselves backing into one of the few walls that the room had.

Lily turned her head towards Felicity and Remus who were looking awkward standing next to each other and was about to break the ice when Claudia decided to make it into the heart of the party and walked directly towards Remus, grabbing the collars of his shirt and pull him close enough so that their lips could touch.

Felicity flipped her head away from them, her hair swinging and covering her face and she had her face scrunched up as she tried to tune out the noises they were making; she wasn't the only one.

Claudia pulled away slowly, a smile on her face showing how please she was before she slid her hand down Remus's body until she found his hand and with one last giggle she led him away. Lily turned her head away to face James.

"So, do you want to dance?" he asked her, gesturing to the crowd already bobbing like a mad mosh pit.

"Uh, not right now. I don't want to leave Fe," Lily told him "Sorry," He shrugged.

"S'ok. We probably shouldn't leave her anyway after that display," he said and nodded his head towards the other side of the room and Lily could make out Claudia leading Remus away from the party and towards the staircase.

"I don't want to know," Lily shrudded and the three of them walked over and sat down on three of the chairs further along the wall. James began to say

"So we never finished our conversation earlier. What do you mean by-" but a voice next to Lily startled her and she turned around to find one of the sixth year Ravenclaw prefects who was at dinner last night talking to Felicity.

"So, uh, we never quite finished our dance last night so I was wondering if we could, uh, finished it..now?"

Felicity smiled shyly and nodded and slid her hand into the one he had out waiting and he led her into the floor.

"Damn," Lily complained "She gets asked to dance after Remus has already left and doing god only knows what,"

"Ah well, what can you do but make the most of the song. Dance?" James asked her again. Lily shrugged and nodded "Dance,"

Two hours later and things started happening. All those boys who carefully walked up to the punch bowl and when nobody was looking, slipped in all the fire whiskey they had on them into it had added up and so the punch was no more that fire whiskey with chopped up lemons, oranges, strawberries and mint leaves lying on top. Anyone who had drunk a full plastic cup was of course smashed, with teenagers not having a good system to stand up to too much alcohol.

Most of the party had moved downstairs into the indoor pool where apparently party clothes were no long necessary and that revealing bras and panties would do as swimmers. The spa was overflowing with bodies all over each other and hands were allowed to go anywhere under the water.

Couples were forever escaping out of the occupied rooms and going together behind closed doors and soon it wasn't safe to open any doors. Remus and Claudia never returned to the party though Lily told herself that she didn't definitely know what they were doing, though her brain had a shrewd idea.

Only a few remaining people were not drunk. Felicity was still dancing with her Ravenclaw, James and Lily were still sober and so was Jessica and surprisingly Sirius. There were five other couples on the dance floor with Felicity and the Ravenclaw and they all seemed themselves. It was hard to tell if the couples snogging were drunk or not because it's not really drunken behaviour.

"Come on!" Sirius was complaining "One look! Just one look!"

"No, absolutely not," Jess snapped "One look at those practically naked girls in the pool and I wouldn't be able to get you out of there,"

"That's the point," Sirius grumbled. Jess turned on James

"And I know you don't want to go down there because your more mature than Sirius," she told him. James scrunched up his face.

"Well..." Lily hit him.

"So what are we going to do now?" Lily asked them. The others shrugged, some party this was starting to be.

"I have a suggestion," a voice said from the doorway. They spun around to find Claudia and Remus standing in the doorway. Lily made her face light up.

"Claudia!" she exclaimed and the two exchanged hugs.

"So what's this idea?" James asked her. Claudia smiled slyly.

"Anyone up for _Seven Minutes in Heaven_?" she asked. Lily tried to stop herself from rolling her eyes. Half the party was playing this game in pairs except they didn't give themselves a limit.

"Umm," Lily said eyeing James who shrugged "Sure,"

"Sirius?" Claudia asked and he replied "Sure, why not,"

"Jessica?" she asked in confusion when she identified the girl standing next to Sirius "How come you're here,"

"Oh, Sirius invited her," Lily butted in, both parts of the party in question looking at her as if they had never seen her before.

"What?" Sirius growled. "I gave you those sweets, remember?" Lily hissed.

"Oh, right. Yeah I asked Jessica to the party," Sirius said, doing an awful job at covering up "And yeah, she'll play too,"

Jessica looked murderous.

"Anyone else in here want to play?" Claudia demanded to the rest of the rooms. The couples dancing paused to discuss it with each other, a few then turning away and continuing as they were and a few stopped and joined the group forming. Felicity looked up at Lily from over her partner's shoulder to see what to do and as Lily inclined her head for Felicity to join them, she lead her partner over and the made up the last of the group.

"Come on then, follow me," Claudia announced and led the party of around twelve into the hallway, up the large staircase that Claudia had decended at the beginning of the evening and ran up with Remus shortly after, along the corridor and into a rather large bedroom with a door on three sides of the room with the back side made of glass to have a good view of the city lights.

Claudia led the party past the four poster bed situated in the middle of the room with satin sheets and through the door on the right hand side of the room. The group filed in one after the other and Claudia closed the door behind them before flicking on a light.

Lily found herself in a large, circular room, which was painted white everywhere there wasn't a door or a mirror. And there were a lot of both. Lily counted...six different doors, all different colours. Maybe they were coded? And there was a mirror in the middle of the space between each of the doors.

"Everyone in a circle," Claudia ordered "And for god's sake mix it up a little. Do you know how dull it is when couples land on each other?"

"Great," Jessica grumbled "I could be a potential victim of any of these guys. Fantastic. Best Christmas ever,"

"Uh uh uh!" Sirius tutted "Christmas was yesterday,"

"Whatever Black,"

"Everyone mixed up? Excellent," Claudia placed an empty beer bottle in the middle of the circle and spun it and it came to a stop on

"Lucky me," Claudia said, as the bottle landed on her and one of the boys who was dancing before "I'll be back in seven," she said to Remus before kissing him softly and standing up.

"You coming Henry?" she asked the brunette boy who kissed his, well, assumed girlfriend and stood up and walked towards Claudia. When he was in reach, Claudia pulled his loosely done up tie so he fell with her into the first closet. Lily watched his girlfriend who was looking extremely mad by Claudia's behaviour.

"So, uh, do we just continue?" the other boy who was dancing asked.

"Not like we want to listen to the sound of them making magic," Sirius said, taking the bottle and spinning it. It continued to spin until it landed on

"Oh you have GOT to be KIDDING me," Jessica exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

"I don't see why you're so upset. Personally I would have been thrilled,"

"You would, and probably do. That's why you're always in the bathroom! But no. No no no no no. You can't make me," Jess exclaimed and folded her arms across her chest.

"The rules say you have to go into a room for seven minutes," the guy told her "And you agreed to play so..."

"Agreed? Pfft. Blackmails more like it," she grumbled, then comprehension dawned on her face. She jumped to her feet and ran towards the door. Sirius ran after her eagerly until she slammed the door in his face.

"Hey! What's the big idea?"

"The rules say you have to go into a room for seven minutes! That guy said so. But he didn't say you had to be in the room with a guy,"

The guy shrugged "I thought it was a given,"

"Open up!" Sirius demanded, banging on the door "You have to come out some time!"

"No I don't!" Jessica yelled back "Lily, you can live off leather can't you?" Lily sighed.

"Ah well, only six minutes of this left now," James told her. The others decided there was no point continuing to play with the commotion Sirius and Jess were making from either side of the door so the group sat back and watched the scene unfold.

The other couple there that had been previously dancing, seemed a little bored with this sitting around and waiting for the bottle so they stood up and sneaked into one of the other closets available in the room.

Henry's girlfriend kept taking anxious looks at her watch every few seconds before at some point jumping to her feet and crossing the room in a few strides and banging on the door that Henry and Claudia must have entered seven minutes previously.

"Coming," Claudia sung out and the door opened a few seconds later and the pair tumbled out. The girl grabbed onto Henry and began pulling him back to their spot on the floor. Claudia looked real pleased with herself and took her spot back in the circle. 

"You spin this time baby," Claudia told Remus, passing him the bottle. Lily heard Jess chocking in the closet and tried to stifle a snicker. Remus spun the bottle and it spun around in a circle and landed on

"Oh look," James said and nudged the bottle so it went one space back to point to Felicity. "Well what do you know,"

Felicity managed to blush herself into the next century and Remus coughed to break the awkwardness. He slowly stood up and Felicity followed suit and they found themselves standing up in the circle.

"Um, yeah, should we, ah" he began, gesturing to the closet next to the one Jess had locked herself in.

"Ah, yeah, okay," Felicity squeaked and followed Remus into the closet who shut the door behind them gently. Lily checked her watch.

"Jess, you're time is up,"

"Oh praise the lord!" she cried, throwing the door open, believing she was free ... until Sirius grabbed her and pulled her in and pushed his mouth on hers. Her body went rigid then limp as he continued to kiss her. Before long he was pulling away.

"You do realise you are now, officially, dead?" Jessica told him "Would you prefer to be buried or cremated?"

"Hey, you dwindled me out of seven minutes. You owe me that much," he growled before sitting back down in the circle.

"Well James, since you tampered with the bottle, I think you should be the one to spin the bottle next," Claudia snapped, obviously a little upset. Ha, upset being a tad an understatement.

"Fine," James said and took the bottle and spun it and Lily felt her eyes grow wide when the bottle landed on her.

"Finally!" James cried exasperatedly, jumping up and pulling Lily to her feet in the same motion before pulling her towards and unused closet and shut the door behind them.

"Finally," James repeated and Lily could see his arm searching for something in the darkness. "Aha!" he exclaimed, his fingers twisting around something and pulling and Lily had to blink as the whole closet was suddenly illuminated.

"Finally?" Lily questioned him "What exactly have you been waiting to do?"

"Finish our conversation that we started before her highness made her grand entrance! Now back to my question, what do you mean 'a couple right way up?'" Lily sighed.

"I dunno, I was just rambling. Second thoughts, I don't know. But it shouldn't matter to me whether I can see them as a couple or whether I think they could be compatible, you can't control who you fall for and I'm not here to stop those feelings, I'm here to support my friend whoever the guy and try and squeeze him out of the clutches of a heartless bitch who only wants him for the physical attributes of the relationship,"

"Wow. Remus a good kisser? Never would have figured that," James joked and Lily punched him.

"Sorry. But that does make sense and Felicity's really lucky to have a friend like you. But if you think about it, love shouldn't be this hard," James told her. Lily stared at him lucriously

"Are you kidding? Love is always hard. All those broken hearts, all the jealousy, all the cheating, all the lust, all the unrequited love. Love is hard,"

"But initially. All that, some of that can't be helped. Some obviously can, cheating can always be helped, but unrequited love? You can't make somebody love you back, no matter how much you wished they did and no matter how much you love them and think you're love is enough. But love? Love should be easy. It should be like smack, a bang, a spark. Realisation. That's easy. Once you have realisation of the love between the two people, that's when it then becomes hard. But not before. Definitely not before,"

"Why Mr. Potter, that was deep," Lily told him in surprise and he bowed his head "I do my best,"

"Since when do you so much on this particular subject? I know you have all the women but that's hardly deep," he shrugged.

"I dunno, once you go through realisation, you understand it. One of those life experiences,"

"Well, spill. Who's the girl?" Lily asked him and James stared blankly at her. Someone rapped three times on their door.

"Seven minutes guys, come on out," Lily began to move towards the door but James stopped her.

"What?" Lily asked as James ran his fingers through his hair and making it messier than it usually was before ruffling his shirt. He reached over and began messing up Lily's hair and she smacked his hand away.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Lily, I have a reputation to uphold," he told her in all seriousness and before she could resist he messed up her hair.

"That'll do, come on. They'll be throwing a fit that we got an extra minute,"

They needn't have worried. When they returned they found the room entirely deserted but not in the least quiet. They exited the round room, back out through the bedroom, along the hallway and down the grand stairs. They heard Sirius's and Jess's voice echoing up from the formal lounge.

"Where is everyone?" Lily asked them as she joined Jess on one of the sofas. They hadn't seen anyone on the whole walk down. They both shrugged.

"Basically after you guys went in, everyone bailed into their own closet. Remus and Claudia couldn't manage to keep their hands off each other even on the way to the closet. Henry and his girlfriend Dawn went inside the closet next to the one their friends were in. And Felicity and that Ravenclaw? Well they thought they'd try a closet all their own. Didn't know she had it in her," Jess told her. Lily looked surprise at the news about Felicity.

"Well, what do we do now?" James asked the group. No one had a good answer.

**A/N: So …. Here is chapter 14. Finally updated, I felt bad for not doing so but I kind of needed inspiration. Also, I really couldn't be bothered writing bitchy in my present state. **

**For those who care, this is my reason (If not, please review!):**

**On my birthday, the 24****th**** July and coincidently the last time I updated, my mum picked me up from Grey Mustang's place where we walked to from school and hung out all afternoon. When we arrived home there was a message on the machine for my mum to go back to the doctor, where she went the day before to have some tests for menopause. Anyway, she returned home and I knew something wasn't right, which sounds sooooo cliché but true. Anyway, turns out my mum has cancer. **

**Yes so that turned my life on its head, my mother was diagnoses with cancer and I spent the better half of a month moving between my friends houses to live because my mum has been a single parent since my father passed away from cancer when I was seven. **

**So that's why I haven't written or updated anything in the past … three or so months now. I don't know when I'll post the next chapter, sometime soon. I have remembered the direction this story will go in now so all I need to do now is write it. **

**And so thus ends my sad and soppy tale.**

**Please review! xox**


	16. Back In The Game

_Disclaimer: Obviously don't own anything, don't know why you'd actually bother to sue me: I have nothing._

**Chapter 15:Back in the Game**

School had been back in for a month but that hadn't stopped the rain lashing against the glass windows with force towards the end of January. Like always during this time, the students found themselves confined within the walls of their second home and it seemed that no one, except Lily, was bursting to get out of them.

It seemed that over time she was the only one doing something with all her time and effort towards the Felicity/Remus cause. Of course, whenever she asked James to help he would help with whatever she needed but even now he wasn't one to come up with plans. Jess and Sirius spend the most of the time bickering, nothing out of the usual but even through all the arguing they rarely avoided each other and in truth Lily began to believe they both actually enjoyed the sport. Lily could never seem to find Felicity or Remus these days either and although half of her wished she could believe they were together at this time, her other side saw the truth when Claudia was never around at these times either.

"I give up," Lily declared, sitting down at the Gryffindor table for dinner one night "I don't know what else I can do. When I find one, I can't find the other thus none of my plans are being made possible"

Sirius looked up at her from across the table and gave her a reassuring smile.

"Lily… can you please pass the salt?"

Rolling her eyes Lily passed it to him, where he proceeded to dump half the contents onto his roast potatoes. Lily placed her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm, drumming her fingers along her cheek as she watched Sirius consuming his potatoes before it became too hard to bear.

"You know Sirius, you really are a disgusting character," Lily remarked, turning around in her seat to search the top half of the table for a better seating option.

"You obviously haven't seen me with the ladies," he replied once freeing his mouth for speech and giving her a flirtatious wink. Lily gave him a blank stare.

"It's obviously never been a dinner date,"

"Oh contraire my dear Lily, we just usually skip right to dessert" he replied, placing another potato into his mouth and continued to smile at Lily as his jaw continued to chomp down at the contents.

"I'll make a note to warn Jess" Lily smiled and watched in satisfaction as Sirius's smile immediately dropped and the chewing ceased.

"Whaght?" he managed to cough out before processing he needed to swallow the remaining contents of his mouth before his speech could be audible. Lily, thoroughly enjoying herself replied

"Oh, I don't know… you follow her around all the time, you jump out behind corners and scare her and you never let her win an argument. I thought they were all the signs that a boy likes a girl?"

Sirius shook his head sadly "Lily, you've been pretending to be a girl for too long you've become delirious. Lay off the magazines," he said, patting her gently on the shoulder before standing up and walking out of the Great Hall.

"But I've always been a girl!" Lily shouted after his retreating back, attracting stares from the people sitting in her immediate surrounding. Sirius turned around and nodded patronisingly at her before continuing out of the Hall.

-:-

"What's wrong?" Jess asked as Lily stomped into the dormitory not long after without looking up from the latest edition of _The Adventures of Martin Miggs_. Lily paused.

"Claudia's not here," she responded; Lily nodded and continued to look around "Felicity isn't here either and-" she continued, putting down the comic for once to look at Lily "Patience is still hounding McGonagall for a dormitory change and Remus still respects girls too much to enter the dormitory without the rest of the Marauders, even if he is dating Claudia. So it's safe to talk,"

"Graah!" Lily growled as she sat down on her bed.

"You know, I do know we've been friends for a while but I still haven't perfected your use of animal impersonations. Best keep it English," Jess replied and Lily sighed.

"I don't know what to do. I mean, I'm trying to help Felicity with the whole Remus thing but it's a bit hard because these days she's always off somewhere in her own world, probably lost behind a loose portrait and Remus is never around, like he's stolen James' invisibility cloak and placed a permanent sticking charm on it to himself. And on the other hand, you and Sirius…." Lily trailed off and Jess looked up at her in surprise.

"Say what?"

"You two are always together doing nothing but argue and don't notice anything else when you're both in the same room because you are both determined to win and it's quite annoying,"

"He's only following me because he knows I'm going to win and I'm not giving up with a fight. And if worst comes to worst, I'll just lead him down to the third floor and shove him into that cabinet,"

"Still not helping," Lily told her, bringing her legs up onto the bed and crossing them.

"Lil, I don't know what you want me to do. I'm not a girly girl so I can't tell you what's going on in Felicity's mind. She could be sulking, she could have given up and hiding so she doesn't have to see Claudia and Remus, not that any of us have seen them these days, or true she could have genuinely gotten lost. But we need to rethink our game plan, and while you're doing that, I'm going to continue my research to ensure that I win," Jess said, picking up _Martin Miggs_ and continued to read.

Lily laid down on the bed and stared up at her canopy. True, this task really needed to rethought. Maybe she'd give Felicity a map next time she saw her to prevent her from getting lost again.

"That's it!" Lily exclaimed, sitting bolt up right on her bed. Jess raised her eyes up over the book stare at Lily in confusion as she sprinted out of the dormitory. In record time, Lily found herself standing in front of the fifth boy's dormitory door, banging on it with her fists. The door lurched open so suddenly, Lily almost found herself falling face first through the door.

"You rang?" James asked her as Lily centred herself.

"James," Lily managed to say through her puffing, she was finding herself out of shape without Quidditch this year, "James!" she exclaimed, once she had calmed down and through her hands onto his shoulders "I need to borrow the map,"

"May I ask why?" James asked as he crossed the room to his trunk and began to rummage within its contents.

"I think we might be back in the game," Lily replied as she walked over and sat on the bed next to the door.

"How so? Did you find Felicity?" James asked before something in his trunk grabbed his hand and pulled it down within its depths.

"No, did you find Remus?" Lily asked as she watched James struggle with his trunk.

"No, did you find Claudia?" James asked as he took out his wand and started smacking the trunk.

"Nope,"

"Well that settles it," James said, freeing his hand from the trunk, map in hand "They're having a threesome,"

"Urgh," Lily replied, grabbing the map from James before hitting him with it "I don't get guy's obsessions with threesomes,"

"Threesomes and lesbians" James said looking off into the distance "Girls will never understand"

"Right, whatever," Lily said, walking away and tapping the map "I solemnly swear I'm up to no good," She sat down on the bed and began to go through the different folds and layers of the map.

"Who are you looking for?" James asked as he slammed his trunk shut and joining her on the bed.

"Felicity. We should have thought of this ages ago," Lily told him as he began helping her search the castle, well, metaphorically.

"Not Remus or Claudia?" James asked as they finished the seventh floor.

"No, whatever Felicity's doing is going to be less harmful and innocent than whatever those two are doing. Besides, I think they're trying to keep that private,"

"Yeah, right," James muttered under his breath "Appearing only for classes, not going to draw attention at all,"

"I actually didn't think Remus was that hormonal," Lily commented as they looked through the sixth and fifth floor.

"He's the one who's dated the least in the last five years, of course the guy is hormonal. I'm just surprised he has so much stamina," James replied and Lily looked up at him.

"Ew. Did not need to know. Besides," Lily said, pointing to the map "I found her,"

-:-

"Lily!" Felicity exclaimed in surprise as the two nearly crashed in the hallway.

"I don't think I've ever seen you move so fast Fe, in a hurry?" Lily asked as the two of them regained their balance and space.

"No, not really. I opened a chocolate frog and it got away from me so I was trying to find it,"

"Someone's probably found it and eaten it by now Fe. Sorry," Lily told her and she sighed.

"Oh well, I'll just have to find another one then. So, ah, what's up?"

"That's what I actually came to find you about. We haven't hung out in ages and I wanted to talk. Lets go back to the common room," Lily suggested and Felicity allowed Lily to lead her back to the Gryffindor common room and back up to their room.

"Oh, you found her!" Jessica said in surprise and jumped off her bed "So where have you been?"

"Oh, um, around?" Felicity guessed, looking between Lily and Jessica.

"She was trying to find her chocolate frog when I found her down on the third floor," Lily informed Jessica.

"I really hate when that happens," Jess said sympathetically, though Lily doubted Jess ever had a problem catching her chocolate frogs.

"You said you wanted to talk?" Felicity turned to Lily questioningly "What about?"

"I just wanted to know how you were feeling these days. I know Claudia and Remus have made themselves less public but I know that can still be hard so I was wondering how you were holding up?" Lily asked her as the three of them sat down on Lily's bed.

"Oh, um, okay? I guess. I don't know, I don't like thinking about it," Felicity told Lily. Lily and Jess exchanged a look.

"There's another reason that we wanted to talk to you," Jess said to Felicity "Which Lily is going to ask you know," Lily shot Jessica a look.

"Thanks Jess," She shrugged,

"You're welcome,"

"What is it Lily?" Felicity sighed as Lily plucked up the courage to blurt it out.

"I was just wondering how things where on the whole 'Operation Get Remus Back From The Evil Gryffindor Skank And Back To Felicity'?"

"Oh," Felicity said in surprise before thinking. "I don't know, its just that, well, it hurts. Lily it hurts so much you can't imagine and as much as I like Remus it just seems that we're not winning, and that we will never be able to win and I just don't think I can face that,"

"Aww honey," Lily said, leaning forward to hug Felicity "Remus isn't that stupid, really. He'll come to his senses; it's just a matter of when. Sometimes boys just need a little push,"

"You think he will? Because really, I'm thinking he won't. The more time he spends sucking face with Claudia is more and more time he's being taken by the wicked bitch and it looks like the light is about to come out,"

"Hey, it's us they'll be dealing with, remember?" Jessica reminded Felicity "If we're going to continue this crusade, we need to plan. Which means we need James, and as much as I hate to say, Sirius, and together we'll join forces just like the power ranges and after we're through, the wicked bitch won't know what's hit her,"

_A/N:Hi guys, I hope this is okay, I guess you'll let me know in the reviews if you're angry or its not up to your standards. Umm in my defence I haven't written any fiction in a year? Well I do hope you think this chapter is alright, I'm sorry its been so long. Thank you for your reviews and comments, a lot of them really touched me :) I don't know when something else will come but I'll try my hardest, I'm doing it for you guys now._

_Moonlight Honeysuckle xo_


	17. Fate Takes A Hand

_Disclaimer: Do not own however feel slightly sorry for the people who are paid to search fanfic. Pages for the ones who do not have a disclaimer so they can alert warner bros. or jo rowling so one or both can sue us little people with a computer, an imagination and quick little fingers :P Wait, I want to be paid for looking through fanfics. All day! Where do I sign up??_

Chapter 17:Fate Takes a Hand

A large smack in front of Remus made him instantly jolt awake. McGonagall gave him a stern look before continuing to hand out the rest of the results from the quiz they took last week.

"And in truth I was actually surprised at the standard of work you displayed on your latest quiz. I am quite confident that at this rate none of you should be questioning about whether to drop Transfiguration at the end of this year. However, those few of you who scored less than 50% on your exam, would you please be kind enough to stay back after class and see me,"

Remus groaned. He had a big 48% written in the top right hand corner of his paper in bright red ink. The bell rang shrilly and the class instantly began collecting their possessions and packed up.

"For homework I would like a brief summary on the theory of human transfiguration. That will be all for today. Those of you with under 50%..." she trailed off as there was no need to continue with her request. Remus only bothered to look up when he heard the large oak classroom door bang back into position and found that he was the only one who was left behind. He groaned again.

"Mr. Lupin, would you kindly join me up here please," McGonagall called from where she had seated herself back at her desk at the front of the classroom. Remus pushed his possessions off the desk and straight into his backpack with a rattle and a clank before slowly walking up to McGonagall.

"Please sit, Mr. Lupin," McGonagall gestured to a skinny wooden chair that he was sure wasn't there during the lesson. He sat. "Now Mr. Lupin, you're marks have been continuing to decline steadily since Christmas when you failed to hand in the homework I had set over the holidays,"

Remus looked down at his lap and fiddled with his fingers, not knowing if he was supposed to say something or defend himself.

"Now I understand that you've been seeing Miss. Roderick for sometime now and the school acknowledges that these things of course happen in co-ed schools. However if this is going to stop you from performing to your best ability in mine, or any of your other classes then I am afraid something will have to be done about this, 'relationship'. Am I clear?"

"Yes Professor," Remus agreed, slightly pink in the face. McGonagall gestured towards the door and acknowledging the sign of dismissal didn't hesitate before fleeing back to the common room. As soon as he walked through the portrait hole, he found himself being attacked. Well, he called it being attacked. Others, he thought, probably considered it a hug.

"Hey Remus," Claudia said in one of her most sultry voices as she pulled away "I'm so bored," she sighed "and I was wondering if you could help me solve that?" she said very slowly, a finger tracing around his chest as she did so. He grabbed her wrist and thrust it back at her; he did not need this right now.

"Sorry. Can't. I have to go study," he told her, looking around. He could see when his eyes looked back to Claudia that there was boiling molten lava brewing up inside of her.

"Study?" she managed to get out through her clenched teeth. Remus smiled and backed away slowly. It was best to be out of arms length at the point of explosion.

"Yeah study. Studying the subjects we learn everyday. Because this is a school. And schools make you study. I'll talk to you later," he smiled before turning on his heel and bolting out of the portrait hole and into the corridor beyond.

Remus found himself wondering the corridors for a bit after that, not quite sure of his intensions but just going where his feet led him. He was feeling bad about shutting Claudia down so fast, it wasn't her fault that he was failing Transfiguration. Well, actually it was and then he felt the growing anger building back up inside of him. Remus went through this cycle quite a few times. He finally found himself outside a classroom that had supervised study hall in this. Poking his head in, he found that it was McGonagall supervising and that it was probably best if he went in. He still had his books from their lesson this afternoon and it would show McGonagall that he was going to try.

Well, he had intentions of trying. After taking out his textbook and finding when he shoved all his belongings back into his backpack that the lid of the ink bottle hadn't been screwed on properly and that the contents of his bag was now stained, he spent the next ten minutes cleaning every visible ink stain. But even when he had finally set up with clean parchment and a tightly closed ink bottle, his mind continued having the argument it had been having on and off since Christmas.

"Do you even like her?"

"Well of course I does, I wouldn't be with her if I didn't,"

"That's not necessarily true, after all, there's not much to the relationship…"

"But we've committed to loving each other,"

"Yeah, somehow screaming 'I love you' surely doesn't count for much during sex"

"That's not the only time. Besides, that's not they only thing we do,"

"Okay name another time you've both said I love you to their face with their pants on. And tell me what the last conversation you had was about,"

"The last conversation we had with their pants on was when- was when Claudia was complained she couldn't be bothered casting a birth control spell every time as it was a mood killer and claimed a rubber was reliable enough,'

"My point, even with their pants on you're thinking about when you take your pants off"

"That's hardly fair-"

"HEY!" someone clapped their hands really loudly in front of Remus's face, bringing him back out of my head.

"Sorry, what?" he asked the brunette Ravenclaw sitting across from table from him.

"You've been staring at me straight for the last ten minutes. You're creeping me out,"

"Sorry," Remus hurriedly replied, instantly looking down and intently flipped through his transfiguration textbook for the theory of human transfiguration. A few minutes later he sneaked a glance at the girl across the table from him, to make sure she wasn't looking at him looking at he but he found her deeply engrossed in her charms textbook –

"Hey, you were here over Christmas, you were at the feast," Remus said, snapping his fingers in realization of when he had seen this girl before. The girl smiled from over the top of her charms textbook.

"Very good. And it only took you ten minutes of intense staring and a few minutes full of quick glances to figure it out. Good job," Remus blushed slightly and turned to look back down at his transfiguration textbook before remembering

"Hey, did you ever perfect that bedazzling charm?" Remus asked and the girl smiled broadly.

"Oh yes, you want to see?" she asked putting her book down on the table, looking eager.

"Sure, why not?" Remus asked, placing his own quill down on the table and folded his arms, waiting for the magic to happen. The girl pulled out her wand, and smiling broadly, tapped her wand onto her head. Remus couldn't help but opening his mouth slightly when the girl disappeared entirely from in front of him. She had moved on from the bedazzling charm which relied on objects for their invisibility and was now able to manage a self reliable spell. He laughed as one by one the girl's possessions levitated and moved slowly but surely out the door in a nice, straight line.

-:-

Back in the dormitory, Claudia was crying her eyes out on Lily's lap, however Lily would use the term 'cry' loosely. No matter how much noise Claudia was making, no tears seemed to ruin her eyeliner.

"It was just, just SO harsh!" she cried and Lily reached over to her bedside table to grab her tissue box and offered it to Claudia. She took one and sat up slowly, daintily dabbing the corners of her eyes with the tip. Lily knew enough that her role was to nod and agree with whatever Claudia said and believed at the time, her teen flicks had taught her that much, but Claudia wasn't really giving Lily a chance to add anything in.

"And I mean, nobody should talk to me like that," she began again after blowing her nose "I am a lady. Not to mention his girlfriend. How he could just brush me over like that to study, what am I, his toy? Claudia Roderick is nobody's toy. He's behaviour is just despicable,"

"Despicable" Lily nodded, passing her another tissue.

"But I guess I should be thankful it's only his studies he's passing me on. Its not like its another girl, its not likes its _Felicity_," she blew her nose again "And we've had fun, so much fun, like you would not believe, but he's right. OWL's are coming and we need to study. We need to think of our future," she said looking earnestly at Lily.

"Yes, the future," Lily nodded.

"But that doesn't excuse him from how he broke the news to me,"

"Not at all," Lily nodded, placing the used tissues in the bin.

"I think I'll remind him about who is on top in this relationship. Remind him his place and remind him how lucky he is to have me,"

"Remind him?" Lily asked in surprise at the sudden turn in tone. Claudia turned around to face Lily and smiled.

"Yes Lily, remind him,"

-:-

Remus returned to the common room that night with his Transfiguration homework done, revision of the work he hadn't paid any attention to and a nod of approval from McGonagall. When he entered the common room he had spotted Claudia but she showed no clue of seeing him and no intention of wanting to see him. Remus shrugged, this was fine by him at the moment. None of the other Marauders were in the common room so he decided to sit and watch the game of Gobstones that had gotten into full swing on one side of the common room. From his position, he had a clear view of Claudia and found himself slowly paying less and less attention to the game and more and more attention to Claudia who was talking to one of the seventh year boys, McDonald, who played keeper on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.

She was probably flirting on purpose Remus realised, because she was still pissed of at how he had left things this afternoon. That was fine by him, he was pretty sure McDonald was one biscuit short of the packet from when he took a bludger to the head in his second year so he wouldn't think of him as a threat. But then again, 'the threat' was deemed attractive by the opposite sex so it was wrong to underestimate him.

'You never know,' Remus thought to himself 'She could dump me for him and let me off the hook,'

'Do you really want to dump her though?' the other part of his brain contradicted, as always. There was an unspoken law between the two parts of his brain that stated they could never let the other side win, always disagreeing.

Remus shook his head. He didn't know what he wanted. He needed to think, have space. Sometimes they call that breaking up, sometimes taking a break, whatever. The part of his brain that wasn't affected so much by his hormones was arguing a point strongly that his relationship was not a 'relationship', which was true. He and Claudia had never had a real decent conversation. She didn't care much for Quidditch and he didn't care about which Weird Sister was dating whom. Besides, not trying to think so highly of himself, but Claudia's magic skill in terms of his own wasn't quite up to par… All that was holding them together was their hormones.

"Stupid hormones," Remus muttered and turned his head to watch the Gobstones match. He had been staring at the Gobstones very intently until he saw something out of the corner of his eye that forced him to turn around. Before, McDonald had been sitting on the long sofa in front of the fire and Claudia had been sitting next to him, but turned towards him and throwing herself at him. Now, she was on top of McDonald, straddling him and passionately kissing him.

'Well, I get the message' Remus thought to himself and stood up 'Pity you're too immature to say it to my face,' and with that he walked out of the common room. He was nearly at the end of the corridor, about to turn the corner when he heard the patter of running footsteps on the stone floor. Turning around he found Claudia approaching him and he didn't know why, but he stopped.

"I get the message Claudia, I maybe failing subjects but I understand that much,"

"No, no that's not what happened!" she cried, throwing herself forward onto his shoulder. He sighed exasperatedly and stepped back.

"Really Claudia? Well then please tell me what really happened. You know, its not like I just caught a quick glance, I saw you there for at least 15 minutes," Remus told her and Claudia began her stifled cries.

"He came on to me-"

"Yes, I'm sure. That's why _you _were on top of _him_," Remus rolled his eyes and began walking off in the opposite direction. Claudia reached out and grabbed his arm and pulled him back around to face him. He groaned.

"What Claudia? You're plan isn't working the way you wanted it too otherwise you'd be talking about it with Lily up in your dorm. So what's the problem already? Trying to teach me a lesson for studying instead of having sex with you? Coz I'm telling you Claudia, running off and snogging a guy every time I choose to do homework or study over you, that's not a healthy relationship,"

"I'm- I'm- I'm-" Claudia began, opening her mouth then shutting again, the words failing to come out.

"I'm what? Sorry? Lying? Spit it out already Claudia,"

"I'm pregnant!" she yelled at Remus, her voice echoing around the corridor long after her mouth had closed. Remus smirked.

"What the fuck are you smirking at?" Claudia yelled at him, "I just told you I'm pregnant and you stand there grinning. You don't say 'Oh God' or 'I'm sorry, I love you' or 'It will be okay' or 'What the hell are we going to do'? What are you fucking smirking at?"

"I'm smirking at the fact that you're grasping at straws. And I mean you really are grasping, you must be desperate. For one, a girl, upon finding out her pregnant state, does not continue with the vendetta she has against her boyfriend by getting it on with the Gryffindor Keeper in front of him. No, she finds her boyfriend, and she tells him through some hush hush way to save her reputation and she cries as the two of them think of something to do. Also, when she began to suspect the pregnancy, she would have confided in her best friend, whom I'm sure at this point is Lily, and for reasons you will never know or understand, Lily would have told me, no matter what she promised you," Remus told her, slowly walking away slowly.

"And, if you really had gotten pregnant, the pregnancy occurring would have been your own fault, for not bothering with the spell. And you know what Claudia? It's been fun, it really has. Thank you for your time and teaching me all those wonderful things. But the thing is, our relationship wasn't real. It never was real. And you know how you can tell?"

Claudia shook her head.

"It doesn't hurt when you walk away,"

-:-

"So that's that," James stated later that night when Lily, Sirius, Jess and himself had finished their dinner down at the kitchen.

"They're finished,"

"The end"

"Well," Lily concluded "At least Remus came to his senses without our help. I always knew he was smart,"

"Yeah, but couldn't he have waited for him to have his epiphany?" Sirius complained, helping himself to some ice cream and hot fudge sauce "I mean, we couldn't even put our plan to destroy Claudia into action,"

"Well, I'm glad Remus figured it out himself," Jessica told them "As much as I hate Claudia, no matter what we could do we could never have hurt her as much as Remus could by dumping her sorry ass,"

"So what's Remus doing with new found freedom?" Lily asked James as he tried to wrangle the hot fudge sauce bottle out of Sirius's hand as now he was eating hot fudge sauce with a bit of ice cream.

"Studying. Apparently it was all because of McGonagall. She gave him the wake up call he needed to be able to see past his hormones,"

"So you're saying we could have just bribed McGonagall to tell Remus had failed and that would be all we needed to do to break them up?" Sirius complained as James succeeded in the tug-a-war "Hindsight = useless,"

"So I guess that's half our plan done," James said as he handed the sauce to a house elf with the strict order to 'hide it' "The couple are apart. So we just need to bring in the other half and it's a done deal, right?"

"I dunno, I haven't seen Felicity all day. She's still AWOL, maybe we need McGonagall to tell her she's failing and put her into a study group so we can find her," Lily said thoughtfully as she ate her ice cream. Jessica shook her head.

"McGonagall has been telling Felicity has been failing every term since she practically began and has yet to take effect,"

"Good point. But what happened today got me thinking. Remus and Claudia broke up naturally, without our help. I was thinking that maybe things might sort themselves out, that we should stop meddling," Lily told them, looking at the faces around her.

"True, but what's life without a bit of meddling?" James smirked.

Lily grinned.

**A/N:Hey guys, what did you think? Acceptable I hope :P Please leave me a review, telling me how I'm going, what you think, if its completely horrible, along those sorts of lines. Thank you so much to **_Zafrinacarlisleesmebellaedward__, __An Aspiring Author__, __Riauna__, __pearberry14, pottyaboutpotter, _**and**_ lundigurrl_ **for reviewing my last chapter. Means so much to me, you guys rock :D**


	18. Clarity and Chicken Wings

**Chapter 16: Clarity and Chicken Wings**

"My my Mr Lupin. This makes it five afternoons in a row, I'm very impressed," Professor McGonagall commented and Remus quietly entered the study hall and took his now regular seat. He nodded in acknowledgement, before removing his belongings from his bag and set them up around him.

"You're not going to stare at me again, are you?" A voice whispered from across the table. Looking up he discovered he'd sat down across from the Ravenclaw 4th year girl again. Seriously, were there no other Ravenclaws in this school?

"If you are just give me a bit of a heads up would you? Coz it's a bit off putting and even though I much prefer this room, I will get up and go down to the one on the second floor if it will make studying easier," she continued, the corners of her mouth rising up slightly. Remus just shook his head silently and opened his History of Magic textbook.

"I was joking," she said when Remus didn't bother to reply, and returned to her studies. Remus lifted his head to answer but thought better of it. He did not need another distraction, no matter how minor. OWLs would be upon them soon and he was determined to do well.

Another person fully aware of the impending doom that was their O W L s was Felicity, who was currently hunched over her books at the other end of the row. No matter how many times she read and reread the history of the Goblin Wars, she could not make it go into her head. She'd tried flashcards and making up songs to remember dates but there was no way she could make the events of Goblins battling other Goblins, with all the blood and guts, interesting.

She groaned, probably a bit too loudly than what was deemed acceptable in a study hall, and smacked her head on her textbook. Very few people bothered to look up, as the noise that issued was what many of them felt at that precise moment, but one such individual did look up when they heard the sound.

"You alright?" Remus asked, recognising the girl. She mentally groaned again before pulling herself back up into the up right position.

"What, now you care?"

"You know what, don't worry about it," Remus shook his head and returned to writing his notes.

"Typical," Felicity murmured and shut her textbook. She was getting no where and another hour of rereading the same paragraph wasn't going to get her anywhere, she'd just have to ask Lily when she got back to the common room.

"Excuse me?" Remus harshly whispered down the table "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh nothing, only that you never care about anyone but yourself and don't look at the mess you leave behind," Felicity retorted, shaking her bag quite violently to try and make her belongings fit inside.

"Whatever,"

"My point exactly,"

"What the hell is your problem?" Remus yelled, causing everyone in the room's heads to turn. They may have ignored grumbles but yells were a different matter entirely.

"Mr Lupin, I appreciate your presence here but if you wish to remain so I would have to ask you to please refrain from outbursts in the future," McGonagall ordered, gesturing for everyone to continue back with their work. Felicity just glared at him, her eyes livid, before swinging her bag onto her back and stalking from the classroom. In one swift motion, Remus' belongings were in his bag and he was running out after her.

"Hey! I asked you a question!" He yelled down the corridor at Felicity's retreating figure.

"And with manners like that its no wonder I haven't answered!" Felicity yelled back, beginning to run, but she was no match for Remus who soon caught up with her and grabbed her arm.

"Let go of me!" Felicity cried, trying to pull her arm free but Remus just dragged her across the hall into an empty classroom and slammed the door behind them.

"Ow!" Felicity glared at him as he released and she rubbed her sore arm "I can't believe you just did that – that was so rude and mean-"

"Felicity, just answer the question. Please" Remus sighed, seating himself on top of the teacher's desk, his tired grey eyes watching her.

"What was the question again?" Felicity asked, still rubbing her arm as she sat down on a desk in the second row "Oh wait, it was 'what the hell was your problem', wasn't it?"

"No, I mean, yes, I guess that's what it came out like, but what I was asking about was the meaning behind your comment about me caring,"

"Well it's true, isn't it?" Felicity inquired "You really didn't care. About anyone. I guess me in particular. You didn't care that I was head over heels for you but even though you didn't feel the same you decided to indulge in my fantasy. You could have said yes in the first place because you were unsure how to spare my feelings, which is understandable, but I can tell you that probably the worst way you could have 'let me know' was by kissing my best friend in the common room, and then subsequently, hook up every time I was around, practically shoving it in my face. I know I didn't seem particularly bright but I wasn't thick, I got the message. You just didn't care that it hurt me every time not only when I saw you together, but when I only saw you! I know you're not all to blame, after all it does take two, but I always thought you were better than that Remus. But I guess maybe you two deserve each other,"

The silence hung in the air a while after Felicity finished talking, but neither of them made a move or tried to make a break for it. Instead they sat silently in the empty classroom, Remus looking down at the ground and Felicity soothing her arm with gentle strokes.

"I'm sorry," Remus said finally, looking up and daring to make eye contact with Felicity.

"I appreciate that but it does little for me now,"

"But I was with Claudia first so I guess going out with you was the wrong thing to do, obviously. Isn't it a thing with you girls, no dating the exs?" Remus shook his head sadly and leaned back on the desk with his hands.

"Yes but what if the best friend and the ex love each other and they were meant to be together? It seems stupid that they shouldn't be happy, just because 3 years ago he went out with her best friend for 2 weeks!"

"You think we're meant to be together?"

"Well I obviously don't think so now" Felicity snorted "You don't treat someone you love the way you treated me. Even if you did a complete 180 and decided you couldn't live without me there is no way I could ever trust you again. I had a crush on you for 3 years and it only took you a second to crush me without second thought. But that's alright, I'm getting over you. I'm becoming a better person without you and Claudia in my life. I have real friends in Lily and Jessica for the first time in my life, who love me for me and don't judge me if I do better than them on a test or if I dress better than them and I'm able to speak more eloquently now with all those stupid 'oh my gods' and whiny comments. I've eaten more than a stick of celery at a meal! So even though what you did to me may have been the worst thing that has ever happened to me, because it happened I am in the best place I've been since I started Hogwarts,"

Felicity jumped up off the desk and made her way to the door of the classroom, glad that Remus hadn't jumped to his feet to bar her entry. He remained seated on the teachers desk, following her only with his eyes.

"You really have changed," was his only comment, and she could tell he meant it genuinely.

"Don't get me wrong, what you did was terrible. It sucked. It was complete pants. But thank you," she gave him a small smile and slipped out the door, leaving Remus in a room filled only with his thoughts.

-:-

The group instantly hushed their conversation when they heard the door to the kitchens swing over, but upon discovering the intruder was Felicity they all jumped up in excitement.

"Fe! Where were you! We were looking for you everywhere!" Lily asked, jumping up from her seat and hugging her friend before escorting her over to the table.

"In the study room with McGonagall" she replied as she seated herself between James and Jessica. Sirius nodded knowingly from across the table.

"Oh course, the one place we never thought to look,"

"Are you hungry? We've nearly finished but we could get you some more," Jessica asked but Felicity shook her head and helped herself to one of the few remaining chicken wings.

"No it's okay. If I'm still hungry after the rest of these I'll just fill up on dessert,"

"And that's the one thing we never thought we would hear uttered from her lips," Sirius stared at her in mock horror, which rewarded him with a kick in the shins from Jessica.

"Oww what was that for? It's the truth!"

"Don't discourage her!" Jessica ordered as Sirius bent down to consol his bruise shins.

"So why have you been looking everywhere for me?" Felicity asked as she finished her first chicken wing and picked up another, Sirius still staring at shock due to her willing consumption of food.

"We've put our brains together, well the few of us lucky to possess them, and we've finally come up with the mother of all plans!" Lily revealed gleefully and the others all beamed out of pride. Felicity looked blankly at the members of the group before turning back to Lily and asking

"Mother of all plans to do what?"

"Uh, to finally get Remus to come to his senses and to make Claudia's life like hell? You know, that one? Personally I had a better plan to try and create a slide from the Gryffindor common room down to the kitchens but alas, I was out voted," James sighed, attempting to help himself to the second last chicken wing but Jessica slapped his hand away.

"Oh, uh, well, that was very nice of you guys. But I don't think we need to put a 'plan into action'," Felicity said calmly before continuing on with her chicken wing. Lily swore even the house elves stopped working out of surprise.

"Uh, I'm sorry, must have misheard you. WHAT?" Sirius demanded, snatching the plate of chicken wings away from Felicity and placing them on the other side of the table. Even Jessica was too shocked to stop him.

"Can we ask why?" Lily asked her a little more calmly as they four of them continued to stare at Felicity like she had just cracked.

"Well, because I guess I'm not too concerned about the outcome anymore,"

"Honey, has something else happened? Have you decided that you don't love Remus anymore?" Lily gently asked, her voice becoming hushed.

"I think deep down I'll never stop loving Remus. I don't think it's possible to ever stop loving someone. But yes, I'm no longer IN love with him. What both of them did was terrible, it sucked. But Remus is suffering with his school work and Claudia is suffering from loosing Remus so what's the point?"

"You do remember the whole 'they ruined your life' thing you were crying several times a night, right?" Jessica reminded, tapping her on the head "All the days we couldn't get you out of bed, or even from out under your doona?"

"But we're teenagers! We all make mistakes. And ruining their lives isn't going to make me happy, I'm already happier than I was right here with you guys," Felicity smiled at the group and gently placing the left over bone back on the plate which Sirius was too stunned to pull away again. "I'm not okay yet, I don't think any of us are okay yet, but don't worry, things will fall into place soon,"

And with that Felicity stood up and exited the kitchen, leaving all her friends staring dumbfounded after her.

"Well there you go, never in a million years had I picked her to become the smart one," Sirius said when he was finally back in control of his words, in time to find James' hand pulling away from the plate with the last two chicken wings clutched firmly inside.

"Hey! You only get one!" Sirius yelled, grabbing one back off James and licking it to claim it as his own.

"You think she's serious?" Jessica asked Lily, both of whom ignored the boy's display of food dominance.

"I dunno, she looked pretty calm, but then again she WAS eating chicken…"

"I just don't see how she could let them off the hook like that. I know if it was me that my best friend double crossed and betrayed me and the boy I had been in love with forever did that to me I wouldn't be this nice. And I'd be eating a lot more of these," Jessica gestured to the freshly made banana split with bubblegum ice cream and chocolate sauce and coloured sprinkles that a house elf just delivered right in front of her.

"Maybe she's trying to be the bigger person? And it has been a few months now since the first 'incident', maybe she's finally over it?" Lily tried to reason but James just shook his head.

"Stop trying to analysis Felicity's mind. Even females have no clue how that thing works. But if you two are still pissed off at Claudia, that doesn't mean you just have to sit idly by because Felicity doesn't want to do anything. You can get her back for all the years of mistreatment she's made you two suffer through?"

Jessica and Lily exchanged glances at each other and grinned.

"Yes, I quite like the sound of that,"

_A/N: So three years huh… probably some sort of record for someone to go and then to actually post another chapter! I'm not sure how many of my followers are still interested or even still using this site but I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed writing this chapter. Thank you to all my readers who have reviewed over the last few years and asked me to continue, it is because of you and your love for this story that this chapter is possible! I hope it's not much different in terms of flow and character and plot, I've tried to match it as best I could. Unfortunately I have forgotten in which direction this story was initially meant to go in but I hope the path I have decided on now is okay. This story is nearly over, I'd say there's probably another maybe 3 chapters to go? I shall endeavour to post them and promise I will not leave you this long again! If you've just discovered this story, welcome! As always, reviews, comments and criticism are always appreciated! _

_Moonlight Honeysuckle xox_


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